


The Miskatonic Project

by copperbadge



Category: LOVECRAFT H. P. - Works, Marvel, Marvel Cinematic Universe, The Avengers (Marvel Movies)
Genre: Alternate Universe - Magic, Body Horror, Demons, Elder God, Eldritch, Fantasy, Gen, Horror, Other: See Story Notes, The Necronomicon
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2018-05-02
Updated: 2018-05-02
Packaged: 2019-05-01 09:56:23
Rating: Mature
Warnings: Graphic Depictions Of Violence
Chapters: 7
Words: 26,451
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/14517975
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/copperbadge/pseuds/copperbadge
Summary: Abraham Erskine may have invented something new with the Serum -- or maybe he re-created something very old. Something...Elder. And now the elect of some very peculiar new heroes are gathering for a fight against horrors they can't even imagine yet...





	1. Chapter 1

**Author's Note:**

> This story is what amounts to a high-horror fusion which draws heavily on the mythos of HP Lovecraft's short stories. While some references are drawn directly (most notably Miskatonic University), most of the gods, monsters, and demons in the fanfic were invented by me after the style of Lovecraft, rather than coming directly from his hand. If you are unfamiliar with the works of HP Lovecraft you should still be able to read this without much confusion, if any. 
> 
> **Thanks to** @tyrannosaurus-trainwreck on tumblr for beta reading! 
> 
> **Warnings:** Themes of horror including body horror, tentacles, animal sacrifice, and graphic violence; character death, including assisted suicide; allusions to (non-graphic) child abuse; and some super weird but non-graphic sex. With the exception of the tentacles and body horror, most of these are one-time events or minor themes within the story. The endnotes will have more detail, and feel free to drop a comment if you have specific questions about the content.

Steve came out of the Vita-Ray machine...different. 

Of course he looked different -- taller, thickly muscled, skin gleaming. But it wasn't the change in his appearance so much as the...sensation people felt around him. Howard claimed not to feel it, and Erskine died before he could weigh in. Peggy felt it, but not in the way others did. To her, he seemed otherworldly, but like an angel or a religious vision -- comforting under a layer of unreality. She even liked the strange black irises he'd developed, so big and dark you could hardly see the whites of his eyes at all. 

Others, however.... 

She didn't see him pull the Hydra agent out of the submarine after Erskine's assassination. Only three people did -- a cab driver, a little boy, and the boy's mother. The cab driver wouldn't say a word, and the boy's mother stuttered and stammered so badly they finally gave up. The little boy just said, "Well, he got him," and looked admiringly at Steve. 

Steve wasn't wet, but the submarine lay on the deck of the pier, and the man next to it was dead, a rictus of horror on his face. 

***

Even with his uncanny eyes, Steve was awfully handsome, and there had been talk of putting him in a stage show to sell bonds. But he made people uneasy, and he wasn't going to sell many bonds if audiences didn't like to look directly at him. Phillips said Steve gave him the feeling he was about to eat someone, and Phillips didn't want it to be him. Steve didn't seem bothered by it, too pleased by his new body and too eager to get overseas. 

Peggy, thinking on her feet, brought Steve with her to the next meeting of the higher-ups, where they were meant to discuss her going overseas. She convinced the suddenly very edgy, uncomfortable officers of the SSR to clear Steve for duty (and approve her own transfer, as well) just so he would leave the room. 

"Maybe it's my air of natural command," Steve joked to her. His teeth looked sharp -- not pointy, just as though the edges would cut you if you touched them. His smile glittered.

"What about _my_ air of natural command?" she asked. 

His smile widened. "Well, you know I'd go anywhere you tell me," he told her, "even if I do outrank you now." 

_I bet you would,_ she thought, but didn't say.

***

"What do you suppose Erskine put in that serum of his, anyway?" she asked Howard once. "What would change a man's eyes like that?" 

"Well, he said he'd tried a lot of things," Howard replied. "He was cagey, but once in a while he'd let something slip. He was trying blood tests with various people -- people who'd healed from unusual wounds, one fella who he said was a mutant of some kind. And right after he got to America he did get a shipment from Antarctica."

"Antarctica! What could possibly be down there?"

"Dunno. He was at Miskatonic University then, he'd been doing some reading in their religious library, of all places. That's why Rebirth was originally called the Miskatonic Project."

Peggy considered this. "Do you suppose it was some kind of animal extract?" 

"If it was, it ain't like any animal I ever laid eyes on, Peg," Howard said frankly. 

"I thought he didn't bother you."

"He doesn't, but he bothers everyone else. There's something new about him. Or maybe it's something very, very old."

***

The first time she saw it, really saw it, was on the mission to liberate the 107th from Hydra. The skies were eerily quiet as Howard flew them over the factory, and he managed to land the little aircraft in a field just beyond it, silent and dark. Steve hopped out, told her not to follow, rolled his eyes when she did anyway, and told Howard to stay with the plane.

"Cheerio, monster," Howard said. "Be back by sunrise." 

"I got a feeling we'll be done before then," Steve replied, and the pair of them crept into the factory, along darkened corridors, towards the sound of men yelling and banging on bars. 

"There," he pointed, and she looked down at a walkway with a guard on it, prisoners in round cages underneath. She barely managed to look back at his face before it was changing -- eyes widening, mouth opening. His straight-razor teeth gleamed. 

Out from his shoulders, sprouting like wings, came strange, billowing plumes of black smoke. They looked unsubstantial, but they twisted and writhed like a sea creature's, like a cuttlefish she'd seen at a zoo as a child. One long, thick tendril caught the guard around the throat and snapped his neck; another lifted him by the ankles once he was dead, plucking a key out of his pockets, and throwing him aside, into a dark corner. 

The men below had fallen silent, and the stink of terror wafted off them in waves.

Steve glanced back at Peggy, tipped her a wink of his deep black eye, and jumped down to the walkway. 

"Relax, fellas," he said, the slim smoky tentacles retracting, one of them dropping the keys into his outstretched palm before coiling back into his shoulders. "I'm on your side."

There was a long silence and then one of them said, "Well, thank God, or Satan. Which one're you?"

Steve chuckled and dropped the keys through the grate to him. "I'm just a kid from Brooklyn. Any of you fellas seen Sergeant James Barnes recently?" 

"I shoulda known Barnes had the devil at his call," another one of them said. 

***

There were too many men to evacuate in Howard's plane, and the factory was primed to blow; Peggy helped the men load the most seriously wounded in with Howard, and then slapped the window to tell him to take off.

"Gotta take you and Cap with me!" Howard called.

There was an explosion behind her and a whoop as Dum Dum Dugan vaporized Nazis left and right.

"I'll be fine," she told him. "Go!"

The plane was no sooner in the sky than the factory began to fall in on itself, and she worried briefly for Steve; they'd split up, him to find Barnes while she marshalled the troops. Still, Steve could look after himself. She tried very hard to believe it. 

A gout of flame and an enormous explosion split the sky, and even the 107th stopped to stare at it. If Steve had still been in there -- 

Then, suddenly, it was as if someone had thrown a film into reverse. The fire rippled upwards and vanished as sheets of darkness, deep roiling black, came flying up along the fire's path. Thin tendrils like vines slunk over rubble and those same strange, smokelike tentacles, now as thick as tree trunks, crept behind them. Anywhere the tendrils brushed against the boots or sleeves of Hydra's soldiers, there were very brief screams.

The 107th, to a man, pivoted, weapons pointed at the factory. Soon it was a seething mass of darkness, with just a pinprick of light at its center. 

Then the light coalesced into a white star, flickering on the chest of a Captain's uniform, and Steve Rogers came strolling out of the coiled monstrosity, James Barnes' arm slung over one burly shoulder. 

"Jesus wept," Gabriel Jones managed. Dernier said something in French.

"What'd he say?" Peggy asked.

"Saying he's gonna live a clean life and get him a rosary just as soon as we get out of this pit of hell," Gabriel translated. 

The star on Steve's chest, which did look like the open heart of the Madonna on a saint's medal, faded as Peggy came forward. She reached out to help him with Barnes, which was when Barnes lifted his head, and she immediately jerked back. He took her in with dark, full-black eyes, and then smiled, teeth glittering in his mouth. 

"Well," Peggy said, as the 107th held its breath. It would be a lie to say any of them relaxed. "They certainly breed them different in Brooklyn."

Later Bucky swore he'd said, "Yeah," but to Peggy's ears it had sounded older, foreign, eldritch, maybe like a prayer: _Ia_.

***

On the first night they made camp, Peggy found herself surrounded by men -- not in the sense that she was the only woman, but in the sense that they actively, intently surrounded her. They weren't impolite, exactly, but they had just come from a place of desperation and fear, and were happy to be alive, and all that...entailed. Their presence, their willingness to bring her tins of food or start a fire for her, the warring exhaustion and relief and want, all pressed in on her insistently. 

And then suddenly it was like the sun rose and the air cleared -- and she saw why. 

"Gentlemen," Steve Rogers said, appearing from the darkness, lit by the fire and with Sergeant Barnes at one elbow, Sergeant Dugan at the other. The men all took a sort of spiritual step back. "How about you tired soldiers find places to bed down for the night." 

They cleared out fast. Steve looked at her, a question in his bright face, and she nodded. He settled in, others joining him -- Dugan, Jones, Morita, Dernier and Falsworth, names she'd learn later. Steve sat on a fallen log one of the men had dragged over earlier; James Barnes sat at his feet. These men were calmer, and she sensed that they, like her, saw angels rather than devils when they looked at Steve and Barnes. They were here _with_ her, not _because of_ her.

"I was capable of looking after myself," Peggy still felt obliged to point out. 

"Sure, but why should you have to?" Barnes said. Steve's eyes still looked, at least in some lights, mostly normal, if you didn't know they'd once been blue. Barnes, you couldn't see the whites at all. 

"It'll be a three-day march back to base," Steve said, as the men passed around bites of food taken from the wreckage of the factory, bottles of wine liberated from an abandoned farmhouse nearby. "I'll spread the word that the first man bothers you answers to me, unless you'd prefer I didn't."

He looked so eager and so adoring that it was difficult to resist. "Just be gentle," she said, and the men all laughed. "You don't know your own strength, Captain Rogers."

Steve and Barnes exchanged a look. 

"Fair," Steve agreed. 

***

Barnes didn't seem any more fussed by his transformation than Steve had been, at least at first, but Steve insisted he get examined by a base medic. When the medics kept flinching and scurrying away in fear, they finally gave up and went to Howard. After all, Howard had dealt with the Serum before, and claimed he had "most of an MD" through association with Erskine. He was utterly serene as he gave Barnes the once-over. 

"We've found the...remains of men Zola worked on, before now," he finally said, and this time, Barnes flinched. "Nobody ever survived it before. I used to joke that there's something in the Brooklyn water but I'm beginning to seriously wonder." 

"I woulda died," Barnes said. Steve hissed, an ungodly noise, and even Peggy and Howard looked away from his face. "No, we gotta tell him, Steve." He turned to Peggy, as if it were easier to talk to her. "Whatever Schmidt did, it messed me up. Bad. I was dying when Steve found me. He..."

Barnes gestured to his own shoulders. Howard looked at Peggy, who held up a hand to forestall his questions. 

"I've seen it," she said. 

"Well, they sorta...." Barnes gestured at his eyes, then at his mouth. Peggy wondered if the teeth were as sharp as they looked. 

"So Zola wasn't using whatever it was Erskine used," Peggy said to Steve, who shook his head. "You passed it on, instead." 

"We always used to share everything," Steve said.

"Most things," Barnes corrected, gaze on Peggy (probably). 

"Well, I can't find anything visible to take a microscope to," Howard said. "Steve, why don't you and I find a bite to eat? Peg, you'll take Barnes here back to the barracks, won't you?"

"Of course," Peggy said briskly, as Howard led Steve off, though Steve kept looking over his shoulder. 

"He's givin' us a chance to talk," Barnes said. 

"I'm not sure what we have to talk about," Peggy replied. 

Barnes looked down at his hands. "You know what's happened to me?" he asked, voice small. "You know what Steve is now?"

She could have lied blithely, like everyone else seemed to be doing to themselves. She sensed terrible things might happen if she did. 

"You are something beyond knowing," she said. "Even to yourself."

He looked horrified. 

"Mind your temper," she added lightly. "When Steve loses his, men go mad." 

He blinked, and it sounded like wood against glass in the silence. Then he started to laugh. It wasn't meant to be unpleasant, she could tell, but under the laughter was a deep, growling noise that she knew shouldn't be heard by mortals. 

"You're all right, Carter," he said, and thankfully the growling ended. "I'll take that to heart." 

***

But it was true. 

The war ended in seven months. It would probably have taken longer, except that Hydra had found or made -- probably a combination of the two -- a terrible weapon. Harnessing the power of the same strange blue glowing material from Hydra's weapons, and destructive even beyond it. They heard rumors of it before they encountered it. 

The Godhammer.

And they murdered Bucky Barnes with it. 

(At least, so they thought at the time.)

Three months after the 107th was rescued, Steve, Bucky, and the Commandos were lured into a trap with the promise of access to the Godhammer. Instead, it turned out to be a test of the weapon, which wasn't meant to kill humans -- it was meant only for whatever Steve and Bucky were now. 

Peggy heard fragments later of what happened. When the Red Skull turned the Godhammer on Bucky, there wasn't even a body left. They whispered that he went screaming, smoke-black limbs writhing, and that right before he vanished, the air ripped open. He left nothing behind. 

There weren't any Hydra bodies left later, either. Steve tore them apart like rags. The Commandos said when Bucky died, Steve screamed and the earth shook, and when his rage was done the only body he left behind was the Skull's.

"Was he like them? Schmidt?" she asked Dugan. She'd had to get him very drunk first.

"Like them?" Dugan asked.

"Like Steve and Bucky. You _know_."

"No," Dugan said, and then, very softly, "he had sixteen eyes. I counted 'em once Steve had him down."

"Sixteen?"

"And tentacles," Dugan said. He held his hand up to his face, fingers drooping in front of his mouth. "Whole bottom of his face. And -- he had terrible wings -- "

That was all she ever got out of him. Whatever deviance of a serum Skull had tested on himself, it hadn't given him the awe-striking glory it had bestowed on Steve. She found herself thinking of the book of Revelations, and remembering that her parents had thought, when the Great War was declared, that it was the herald of armageddon. 

The skies were red for four days after Bucky died. Anyone who came near Steve encountered a low, disquieting hum; one man had an eardrum burst. It wasn't until she arrived to find him trying to drink himself unconscious, and tried to help balm his grief, that the skies began to clear. 

After all, they still had a war to fight. 

"What's been done with the Godhammer?" he asked her, when the sky was blue again and they were on their way to a new front. "Howard?"

"No," she said. "Morita has it. We agreed Howard...shouldn't." 

"Good," he said. "Keep it safe."

"We could destroy it."

"No," he answered, and she saw a flicker of the star, for just a moment. "No, you might need it."

***

Steve was different after that -- intense, driven, very quiet. But if she had ever doubted he was still the same man underneath, the end of the war put paid to those doubts. 

With Steve at the front of the army, they tore through Europe. By the time they reached Germany, men would see the star and throw down their arms; some would kill themselves, though Steve never again destroyed soldiers the way he had after the Godhammer. Europe fell to the Allies and then America turned east, meeting the Russians in wary truce over the bodies of the vanquished German and Italian forces there.

After V-E day, they gave Steve a week's leave in the States, mostly to get from New York to California, and then launched him at the Pacific Theatre, which fell quickly. Oppenheimer, out in Los Alamos, was still years from becoming Death, the destroyer of worlds, when V-J day was declared. 

All over the world, people were celebrating peace. But in a little room on a carrier off the coast of Japan, Peggy sat with Phillips and listened with mounting horror as the "peace" process began.

"What we have here, gentlemen," one of the generals said, "is an opportunity not just to ensure peace, but to usher in something new. We've drawn up treaties with the Soviets -- "

" -- but we haven't signed all of them yet," another one said. 

"Are you talking about pushing Russia back from Europe?" Phillips asked, eyebrows raised. 

"No," one of them laughed. "We're talking about invading." 

"Put a stop to this Communism nonsense before it spreads any further. With troops in the Pacific, with the Red Army weakened, and with Rogers back in Europe, coming from the west, we could take something much bigger than Japan." 

"Russia," someone said with relish.

"Get her before she gets us." 

"The Global United States."

"Or the United Western World."

"We could bring Democracy to millions."

"With the emperor in the White House," Phillips remarked neutrally. 

"With the duly elected President in the White House," one man corrected. "We'd give the Russians a vote, eventually. Of course, their electoral count would have to be low, to maintain mainland political superiority."

"And we'd have to deal with the Commies first."

"Like we dealt with the Japanese in the states?" Phillips asked. Everyone looked faintly uncomfortable. 

"The point is, we have a use for Captain Rogers," a general said.

"Huh. Didn't think you'd talked much to him about that."

"He's a soldier. He'll go where he's told."

"Is that so?" Phillips asked, and gestured with one hand. One of the doors to the conference room opened, and Steve stepped inside. "You hear okay out there, Rogers?"

"My hearing's pretty good, sir," Steve said. When he spoke, his teeth clicked, in a way that even to Peggy said _predator_. 

"You got any thoughts for this august assembly?"

Steve nodded. Peggy watched, pleased, as the other men in the room shifted uneasily in their seats.

"It's been in my mind for a while that I have power people shouldn't have," Steve said. "With all due respect, you all definitely aren't the men who oughta have it. Maybe even I shouldn't, but I'm stuck with it. And in peacetime that'll go hard for me, but I'm not gonna wage a war I don't believe in. I came to the Army to fight for folks who couldn't, not to lead a conquest."

He glanced at Peggy, licking his lips, and she realized that Steve was as scared of them as they were of him. 

"I can't shake it off, the power I have. But I can take it away from you," he said, reaching into his jacket. Everyone tensed. He laid a sheet of folded paper on the table. "So this is my resignation, effective immediately."

"You can't just resign from the Army, son," said a man who looked like he was about to piss himself. "There are rules, procedures -- "

"Sir, you really think you can stop me when the entire Japanese Navy couldn't?" Steve asked mildly. His eyes widened, mocking innocence, and the combination of the blameless face and those dark, ageless eyes made at least two of the generals shudder. A single night-black tendril crept out from under Steve's collar, curving up his throat and around the back of his head, through his golden hair.

"If I were you gentlemen," Steve continued, "I'd thank my lucky stars the war is over, and go home to the States, and leave off world domination for a while. 'Cause I think you know I hate a bully. And these days I got a lot of misery to spread around, if I care to." 

When he turned to go, Phillips got up and followed him. Peggy did too. 

***

"Are you sure about this?" Peggy asked him, two months later. The air had grown cold, and her breath puffed as she stood on the deck. 

"Well," Steve said, leaning on the railing, looking out at the approaching coast of Antarctica. "It's either this or the Godhammer, Peggy."

"Steve, no."

"Doesn't matter anyway -- you say you got it locked up?"

"Yes, it's safe," she said, for the hundredth time. "Thank goodness, too, the way you're talking."

"Sorry. It's just...the world doesn't need me," he said. "And I'm tired of men killing men. And if I don't fight, I get..." He twitched, skin juddering over his muscles, and she knew what he meant -- she'd seen how anxious he got, how the pent up energy inside him wanted loose. 

"You can't just wander the snow dunes, wailing in anguish like a gothic hero," she teased. He gave her a small smile, no teeth. 

"No. I won't do that. I just -- I know I have to come here," he said. "Whatever I am came from here. And I'll find it. I need to know what it is."

"How?"

"I can feel it. I'll know where to go."

"And once you find it?"

"I'll sleep," he said, voice full of longing. She noticed that unlike hers, his breath didn't freeze in the air. "At least..." His brow screwed up in thought. "Until I'm needed again."

"There are people who need you now."

"Yeah, but not -- the way you're thinking, Peggy. I'm going to wait until the biggest threat to mankind isn't mankind itself anymore. That day'll come one day. And if it doesn't, well, the world'll be good and safe, and I'll see Bucky again, maybe." 

She nodded. It would hurt -- terribly, and for a long time -- but she could see the wisdom of what he was saying. And she knew trying to tether him to the world of humanity would hurt more. 

"I'd like to give you something, before I go, though," he said. "I -- wanted to, but I'm not sure if you want it. If you don't, I won't mind." 

"Try me," she said, and he smiled. 

"Let's talk below," he invited, and she followed him down.

***

Steve had a little stateroom, really more of a cubby, partly because of his rank and partly because nobody wanted to sleep when he was near. He led the way in, and she closed the door behind them so that he wouldn't have to. Steve was like that; he knew what he did to people, and he tried never to be the one who trapped someone anywhere. 

He generally, she thought, left that up to her. As if he trusted her to use him as a weapon, knowing she would be more subtle than he would. 

"You gotta know," he said, when the door was closed. "How I feel about you. More'n anyone else except Buck, maybe, and that's different." 

"But you'll still leave," she said softly. He nodded. 

"In part because of how I feel," he said. "I couldn't -- if I hurt someone, an innocent, that'd be awful, Peg, but if I hurt you..."

"Would you?"

"Don't know. But I can't risk it. I'm too..." He made a frustrated noise. "Young isn't the word, but it's the best I got." 

"So you have to give us all up. And I have to give up you," she said. She hoped she didn't sound angry; she wasn't angry, only sad. 

"Mostly," he said. "But if you wanted. I could give you part of me."

"Not like James," she said hastily. 

"Jesus, no," he replied, just as horrified. 

"Then what?" 

He rubbed his hand over his face, and his dark eyes seemed like endless voids. 

"A child," he said. "I could give you a child. I can't give you the house and the picket fence, and it'd be a hell of a way to come home, pregnant by some fella out of wedlock, but I could -- "

"Yes," she said. He paused.

"Yes?" 

"A part of you. I want a child, anyway, and a good man..." She shrugged, helplessly. "You are good, Steve. The best man I've ever known, maybe." 

"It wouldn't be easy."

"I don't care about easy."

"And he wouldn't be...normal. Well." Steve cocked his head. "He could be. A child of two names."

"Two names?" she asked, ignoring how they both knew it would be a son. 

"A normal child. A beautiful little boy," Steve said, thoughtfully. "And a secret name. Not to be spoken until, unless, more is needed. Do you understand that?"

She nodded.

"Of course you would. Why even ask." He gave her a bright smile. "Are you sure, Peggy?"

"I'm sure," she said, and reached for the buttons on her blouse, but he shook his head. 

She let her hands fall, held still as he approached. There was a smell like burning leaves, and she could feel herself shaking, but she didn't break and run -- and in another second she didn't want to. Looking into his black eyes, she felt warm, for a second as if the burning leaves were all around, and then in another second, and for an eternity after, as if she were plunged into warm water. No need to breathe, like in a dream; no need to do anything but drift in the darkness. 

Her body opened, not in the way she had, fumblingly, with a boy or two before the war, before Steve, but as if a door to her entire being was unlocking. She was conscious of his hands holding her head, big warm palms cupping up through her hair; she could feel her nipples tighten against her brassiere, her pulse pounding with arousal. He kissed her and she didn't know where she was anymore, blinded by the smoke billowing around them, paralyzed by thousands of black tendrils pulling them together. It felt like an earthquake, like being too close to a dropping bomb, the sudden jerk of lost breath, and then an ecstasy washed over her that she would only feel once more in her life. 

She laughed, and she heard him laugh, and then it deepened into a roar that she couldn't fear, still caught up in the dizzy pleasure of their coupling. 

The fog around them cleared, dissipating away into nothingness, and the tendrils caressed her skin as they withdrew. Her feet touched the floor, and she caught her breath like the wind had been knocked out of her. She felt her shoes, her uniform, the earrings in her ears, all still intact, and saw him still dressed, not even a hair out of place. 

And she could feel, low in her abdomen, a weight like she already carried a fully-grown child. She lowered her hands to press against the flatness of her belly, to be sure, but there was no swelling, not yet. Still she could feel it, a comforting presence, the growing unborn child. 

Steve whispered one name in her right ear, and then a second in her left. She repeated the first only. The second felt as though it was branded on her skin. 

"I can feel him," she said. He put a hand over hers, and her whole body jolted with dual pleasures, one sensual, the other comforting, like finding an unexpected home.

"Goodbye," he said to both of them, and then there was a yell abovedecks. The ship began to slow; they'd reached port. 

***

The Great Dark Rh'Tat, called It Who Sees by Abdul Alhazred, known to a small fishing village that once encountered It as The Maker Of Knots, had been grievously wounded. When Atlantis fell, It had suffered the loss of several...limbs, for lack of a better word. It had crawled along the seafloor, over the bones of whales and through the withering embraces of the giant squid, until It had reached darker waters. Eventually, It had pulled Itself out of the icy water into a vast cavern, and there It had lain for centuries, millennia, slowly healing, surrounded by the ice. 

The little wound It had suffered several years before, when a party of explorers had tried to take a sample and mostly been driven mad, that was nothing. A mere slice along ghastly bubbling flesh. It thought maybe one man had escaped, but It didn't really think much about it at all. Its single black eye, twenty feet across, pulsated and winked in the darkness, even when nothing moved. 

But It could feel something drawing closer, now, and long before It heard a man's boots crunching over the bones, It knew Its child was coming home. 

_Why do you disturb us now?_ It asked. _Why did you walk so long amongst mortals?_

"I didn't know what or where you were," the thing replied, in human language. Rh'Tat's eye twitched and jerked back and forth, displeased. 

_You are too mortal,_ It said. 

_Not so mortal_ , the thing answered, a little humbler now.

_You are a new thing made from us, but not of us. You take the side of mortals, like a mortal._

The thing had teeth, terrible teeth, human teeth. Rh'Tat had never had teeth; Its maw was barbed with thorns. The thing showed its teeth now and Rh'Tat could tell it was...amused. Appalling. 

_Yes. I take the side of mortals,_ the thing said. 

_We are not mortals. This planet is ours. And one day we will claim it, and your mortals will bow to us or be devoured._

The thing considered this. _Maybe. Maybe I'll destroy you, maybe you'll destroy me. Does it matter, right now?_

Rh'Tat squirmed. _We suppose not._

_May I sleep here, then, honored parent? I'm tired, and cold, and one I love is dead, and the world doesn't need me,_ the thing said, and in its sad little voice Rh'Tat could hear the plaintive whine of an egg-child, even if it was only a pale imitation of a monster. 

Mercy is a whim of gods. _Yes. Of course. Until we destroy you, or you destroy us._

The thing showed its teeth again. _Thank you._

It arranged its tiny body up against one wall of the cavern, in a place mostly clear of bones, and Rh'Tat's eye glistened as black tendrils crept over the thing's limbs, blanketing it like bound prey waiting to be devoured. Oh, once there had been such sacrifices....

Slowly, unconsciously, The Maker of Knots, It Who Sees, the Dark Eye Of Madness Rh'Tat, let one of Its tentacles slither over until it was wrapped around the thing protectively. An egg-child was fragile, after all, at least until it had consumed the souls of millions, which seemed unlikely for this one in the near future. 

***

Nine months later, Peggy Carter gave birth to a boy. The pregnancy had been easy, almost too easy, and the birth painful but brief. 

"You'll call him Steve, I suppose?" Howard asked, holding the little one as if he might break. He seemed ordinary, human, no black eyes or eerie teeth (though he did already have three normal human teeth, which the nurses said wasn't unheard of).

"Good lord, no," Peggy replied. 

"Really? It's not like people don't know where he came from, Peg," he said.

"How rude," she replied, though it was true -- the only reason she'd been spared most of the social pressures of having a baby out of wedlock was that everyone knew it was Steve's. 

"Then what's his name?" Howard asked. 

"Steve left a name for him," she said. 

"Traditional. Conservative. How very Steve," Howard said, when she told him what it was.

She didn't mention the second name, the name that was also traditional, if only in the sense that it predated human memory. She knew she mustn't speak it aloud, nor write it down. He looked ordinary, but he wasn't, and she knew that if he heard his true name called, the godhead would overtake him too soon, long before he was ready. 

Howard put the boy in her arms, and she stroked his little nose; he screwed up his face and squeaked. She thought of black-eyed Bucky, and Steve's razor teeth, and the Godhammer, in an SSR storage depot, locked in a trunk that even Howard didn't know about. Someday, she'd tell her son about it, just in case Steve ever woke -- or something worse than him did.


	2. Chapter 2

When Tony Stark was dying, Nick Fury brought him a trunk of his father's things. Tucked into the trunk, not one of his father's things, was the Godhammer. 

It didn't take Tony long to work out what it did, or how it did it, and when Iron Man flew into combat over the Stark Expo, he was carrying it in his chest. Enough to power the reactor for a lifetime, cleanly and without killing its bearer.

Tony didn't know what it was, and Fury hadn't known it was there, both of which were just as well. 

***

When Tony was a child, someone -- perhaps even his father -- had given him a Captain America shield. Whoever had given it to him, one day Howard had seen him playing with it, pretending to fend off hordes of evil monsters. 

And Howard, a monster himself in some respects, had not always been a terrible father -- Tony couldn't have adored him as much if he had. 

"Captain America's shield protects you from everything," Tony had informed his father solemnly. 

"Not everything," Howard had replied, hitching his trousers and crouching down. "But you know what does?"

"What?" Tony asked, breathless.

"Science," Howard said. Tony looked skeptical. "With enough time and enough thought, science can explain anything. You know what kept me safe in the war?"

"Science?" Tony asked dubiously.

"Science," Howard agreed, but he saw Tony didn't really believe him. "Well, one day you'll understand. When everyone else was afraid of Captain America, I never was, because I knew, someday, somehow, we'd understand him."

"Was he scary?" Tony asked. Sometimes you heard things, even as a small child. There were no photographs of Captain America -- they said because he didn't like the spotlight, but Tony had seen some of his father's attempts. Where the hero of the war ought to be, there was only blurred grey swirls, or a shadow shaped like wings. Sometimes the same photo would have different images if you looked at it twice.

"Steve was only scary to other people," Howard told him. "Remember that."

Tony didn't know if it was science, or some quirk of genetics, that shielded him from what others saw. The first time he saw video footage of the Hulk, he watched in astounded fascination. There were others in the room for the briefing, mostly soldiers and government analysts, the kinds whose careers had their hands in blood up to their elbows like Tony himself once had. Some of them had to leave the room. In the video footage, people who looked directly at the Hulk sometimes tried to claw their eyes out. 

Bruce Banner had become something fascinating, ethereal, a step removed from their reality. Tony wanted to know more. 

After, while some people discreetly swished water in their mouths and others fidgeted, eager to leave, Tony had suggested that finding the Hulk should be a priority. Nobody liked the idea. 

"Who do we send after that?" Ross asked. His knuckles were white around his pen. 

"I'm going to suggest a radical maneuver," Tony replied. "There's only one agency which has the full files on Steve Rogers and experience handling...adaptives like him."

"SHIELD?" Ross scoffed. 

Tony flicked the video on and rolled it backwards about two minutes. He heard retching behind him. 

"Do you want video footage of your boys doing that?" he asked, pointing to a woman who was banging her head against a wall. "SHIELD has tech that can help with this, and SHIELD isn't military, so my assisting them won't violate SI's no-military policy."

"You put that policy in place, Stark, you can wipe it out just as easily," Ross said.

"But I won't," Tony replied. "I'm stubborn like that. So I tell you what -- you can hand the Hulk file to me, or to SHIELD, or you can send a bunch of nineteen-year-olds to try and fight him, and make the biggest PR mistake of your career. Up to you."

"Jesus, let him have it," someone muttered, and everyone else agreed. Tony flicked the video screen off, and there was a breath of relief. It seemed like even Ross was relieved when the dossier was handed to Tony a few minutes later. 

"What the hell did you guys see in there?" Pepper asked, when Tony emerged.

"I couldn't describe it to you," Tony said, which was true; there weren't words for what the Hulk looked like. It was like describing the blind spot of a migraine headache. "I wouldn't even if I could," he added, because inflicting the Hulk on the unsuspecting was the act of a sadist. "But I've got some new work to do."

Later, he'd gone to retrieve Bruce Banner himself, with Natasha as backup; she wasn't immune in the way he was, but she had an iron stomach, and she handled this kind of thing better than anyone else Tony knew of. Still, no reason to traumatize her, so he asked her to wait outside while he walked into Bruce Banner's isolated little shed of a home on the edge of Calcutta. 

"You shouldn't startle me, whoever you are," Banner called from a workbench, without looking up from his microscope. "And I should warn you, I'm going to be very unhappy if you have a gun."

"No gun," Tony said, and Banner's head jerked around. "I mean..." He flexed his arms, grinning.

Banner took his glasses off slowly. "Well, this can't be good."

"Such a negative nelly," Tony said. "Everyone's always happy to see me, and yet look at you, complaining about my glowing presence."

"Forgive me if I don't ask for your autograph." Banner stood, like a wary animal. "So what, no suit? Am I surrounded? You want me to come quietly?"

"I do want you to come quietly. I mean, I hate property damage as much as the next incredibly destructive monster," Tony said. 

"You don't know what monsters are."

"You can't possibly believe that," Tony replied, cocking his head. "But no, you're not surrounded. I have a friend outside, she's our ride home, but other than that...just me." 

"And why should I go with you?"

"The opportunity for adventure, riches, fame...a laundry machine..." Tony remarked, twiddling the crank of a hand-powered washing bucket. He faced Banner again, centering his body, a subtle signal that now it was time for honesty. "I've convinced the military to back down. SHIELD now has your dossier."

"And you work with SHIELD."

"When it suits. Really I want to study you, and to study with you; your work before your little...permanent sabbatical was truly excellent. Plus we're kind of putting a team together, and Nick Fury -- have you met him? One eye, spooky jacket, real character -- thinks you could benefit from it."

"Teams and I don't really get along."

"You say that now, but I've seen footage of the Hulk. There's sense under the madness."

Banner's lips twitched. "The madness is hard to get past."

"Not for everyone. Not for me. And I think with someone as bright as me to provide feedback, you could learn control."

"And if I say no?" 

"Why would you say no?" Tony asked, genuinely curious. 

"I don't trust you. I don't trust me," Banner said. 

"How do we get to you trusting me?" Tony asked. Banner stared at him. "Come on, I'm a businessman, a negotiator. How do we make you trust me? Because if you can trust me, I can handle the rest. What if you saw me handling the Hulk?"

"Nobody _handles_ the Hulk."

"But if you did?"

"If you could prove to me that you could contain it, control it, then -- yeah, I'd say yes. But you can't."

"Why not?"

"Because nobody can. And even if you wanted to try, I'm not interested in causing permanent brain damage in one of the world's smartest men. He's not coming out to play," Banner said. 

"This is probably not going to help in the short term, but I promise you, it's a long-term solution," Tony said, and shot him in the face with a repulsor blast from one of his hand units. 

Banner yelled, which went from "startled human in pain" to "monstrous roar of rage" very quickly. Several voices screamed in unison, in fact, coming from one throat, right before the man vanished and the monster overcame him. The transformation was quick, but not so fast Tony couldn't feel the shift in the air pressure of the room, the rise in temperature. In the distance he could hear goats screaming. 

It wasn't exactly a swirl of light, and it wasn't exactly a solid form, but it wasn't not-solid either; there weren't human words to describe it, though all this meant for Tony Stark was that he would have to, somehow, create some. Its presence filled the room, and what little furniture there was began to clack and vibrate against the floor. 

When the transformation was complete it came for him, diving towards him, and there were fleeting impressions that his mind could make sense of: an asymmetrical wall of eyes, a single thick tentacle, a void so black it had dimensionality, like a walking shadow. Once, in one of Howard's attempted photographs, Tony had seen a wheel of wings; he couldn't identify it then, but as an adult he had, and he saw that within the monster too. 

But it didn't attack. It didn't even touch him. It tried, several times, circling and -- if it had a nose it would have been sniffing. If it had paws (sometimes it did) it would have clawed at him. 

It smelled like decay, but not rotting meat -- more like the warm scent of plants left to rot. It was natural, of the natural world, and if it was natural it could be understood by that world's laws. Tony wasn't a biologist, but he could fake it. 

"Hello, monster," he said quietly. The Hulk swirled and shifted around him. The goats started screaming again. "Now, that's not very kind, is it?" 

There was a sense of curiosity, like ten thousand eyes watching him. Fortunately he was used to that kind of thing. 

"Calm down now," he said softly. "You can't hurt me. You can't even scare me. Bet that's never happened before, has it? I doubt you were looking for someone to understand, but I'm here now. I bet you came from something a lot bigger and you can't find it, can you? But I'm bigger than you. Or at least, stronger. So how about you let me help?" 

He held up a hand, forming a fist, and the Hulk gave the impression of a million twitching fingers, curling and uncurling. 

"Man, this is some good acid," Tony murmured to himself. He released his fist and wiggled his fingers, and the goats stopped screaming. The sense of unreality, too, seemed to fade, until his mind could process what was before his eyes. Silvery and glittering, swirled with color, barbed with teeth -- and it still had ten thousand very unsettling eyes, but they could work on that. 

"Yeah, you'll be fine," Tony told it. It settled, an amorphous blob, on the floor, managing to look like it was pouting despite not having lips (or possibly despite having far too many). "Come on, gimme back the other guy, and I promise next time you get loose I'll be there to help." 

Bruce Banner opened his eyes and stared up at Tony from the floor, mouth gaping.

"You shot me in the _face!_ " he said. 

"Yeah. Had to get your bigger half out somehow. He and I had a nice talk."

Banner blinked. "You saw it?"

"Yep."

"Just now, you saw the Hulk."

"Yeah. Man, that's a trip, isn't it?"

"Usually at this point people are bleeding from orifices that don't normally bleed," Banner said. "How -- ?"

"Science," Tony said. "Plus I am just that cool. I like him; I can work with him. So?"

He offered his hand, then wiggled the fingers. Banner flinched, then seemed to be having some kind of internal conversation.

"It likes you too," he said, looking bewildered. He took Tony's hand, pulling himself upright. "It doesn't even like _me_."

"It's the goatee," Tony told him, beaming. "Monsters dig the goatee." 

*** 

Steve Rogers was none too fond of this new century, at first.

He had awoken, in his ancestor's cavern, to find the Great Rh'Tat sleeping; driven by instinct and dreams more than sense, he had gathered his mortal things quietly and slithered out from under a bubbling, greasy tentacle. He felt different -- renewed, calmed -- and when he emerged from the cavern he discovered what the change had been. 

There were penguins nearby, and he wanted to feed, but instead of the coiling, smokelike tentacles he'd had before, he now only had the whip-thin, razor sharp tendrils -- and a set of huge, amorphous, spike-feathered wings, black shot through with gold, prehensile claws at every joint. 

After he ate, he made the mistake of showing the wings when he landed at McMurdo Station, the first sign of human life he saw. The man who saw him bled from his eyes for ten minutes while Steve apologized, the wings hidden from view. The rest of the station's staff, eager to be rid of him, got Steve a chartered flight to Australia and, from there, a military transport back to the States.

"It's an honor," the pilot said, very unconvincingly. "Everyone knows the story of course. How you helped win the war and then you just disappeared."

"Is that the story," Steve said, thoughtfully.

"And -- and that you'd only come back when America needed you," she finished. She looked up at him. "Do we...need you?"

Steve buckled himself into his flight harness. "You will," he said quietly. 

SHIELD -- the descendant of the SSR -- had welcomed him back. They'd given him a new uniform, with a white star on the front, so someone had listened to Peggy's stories. They'd unsubtly asked him why he'd come back, which he couldn't immediately answer, and they'd assured him that SHIELD would keep the military off his back, as if Steve needed their help. How short human memory was. 

And when he finally met the fabled Anthony Stark, Howard's son, face to face without the armor, in a lab on the Helicarrier, he knew at once. 

"What's in your chest?" he asked. Stark stared at him. " _What's in your chest?_ "

"What's it to you?" Stark asked, with the same bravado his father had always shown. 

"I can feel it," Steve snarled, and he knew the tendrils were creeping down his arms, around his throat, but he couldn't stop them. "I know that. It's the Godhammer."

Stark opened his mouth for a smart retort, then stopped, jaw hanging.

" _The_ Godhammer?" he asked. 

"Don't you even _know what it is?_ " Steve knew the screech beneath his voice was audible -- Natasha lifted her hands to her ears, and Banner flinched. 

"I didn't know it was the fucking _Godhammer_. I found it," Stark said. "In a trunk of my father's things. It was useful. So I used it." 

Steve couldn't argue with the logic, as much as he wanted to. It was as safe in the chest of Iron Man as anywhere. But he never managed a reply, because someone else spoke.  
"Captain Rogers, I'll take responsibility. I gave him the Godhammer." 

He turned. Coulson, a bland-faced, middle-aged man who had previously been assigned to help Steve navigate SHIELD's labyrinth of paperwork, stood in the doorway.

"It was entrusted to me, and I felt it could be useful," Coulson continued, which was when Steve saw it -- the tilt of his chin, the set of his eyes. He didn't know how he hadn't seen it before, but perhaps he hadn't wanted to. And he had looked too young to have been born in the 1940s -- though that could perhaps be explained, given his ancestry. 

This was Peggy's child. And Steve's child. Which meant -- 

The Helicarrier suddenly shuddered, and there was no time. Whatever was coming had come, and Steve needed every ally he could get.

"I'm sorry," he said to Coulson, who frowned, puzzled. Steve raised his voice in a hiss, calling his true name. " _I summon thee, S'Dalap._ " 

Before their eyes, Phil Coulson threw his head back in a scream, one Steve recognized from his own transformation. Smoke billowed out of his shoulders, whipping around him uncontrollably, and when he lowered his head, his wide mouth gleamed. Two fangs sat where his upper canines had been. His pupils were black, except where they glowed red. 

_Hello, my child,_ Steve said, spreading his wings, and Phillip -- S'Dalap, Blood-Sighted, He Who Had Slept -- answered back.

 _Hello, father._

Behind them, someone gasped for breath. 

"It's coming," Steve said to the others. Natasha was staring, hypnotized, at his wings. Banner had his eyes closed. Stark was resting a hand over the Godhammer. Thor stood in front of Banner, fists clenched. 

"We have to go and fight. _Now,_ " Steve urged, and the tableau broke. 

"We are gonna have a long fucking talk when this is over!" Stark said, pointing at him as he took off running for his armor. 

"I bet we are," Steve muttered. He listened to the air, the way he'd learned to do in the war, and felt an alien presence approach. He could tell his offspring felt it too. 

Steve had been told that the Earth was the property of the Elder Gods, which he figured made it his inheritance. He would cede ground to humans, having been one once, but no two-bit punk from some other world was going to take his birthright from him or his beautiful black-eyed spawn. 

"Let me teach you to feed," Steve said. 

***

Phillip, his beloved S'Dalap, didn't die when Loki stabbed him. He smiled. But he did bleed, and he screamed, and everyone heard it. 

_Everyone._

Steve would not let another one of his family fall, and when he went into combat against the Chitauri, it was with claws unsheathed, and teeth at the ready. 

***

Later, after the Chitauri and all that had entailed, after Steve's first flight in combat on wings that looked like gold-laced holes in the sky, after they ate and rested and Steve assured himself that his spawn was well on the road to recovery, Tony caught him alone on the deck of the Helicarrier. 

"How's Agent?" he asked, and Steve frowned. "Coulson. Or will it be Rogers now?" 

"Coulson, I think," Steve replied. "He's -- "

Steve had walked through the medical ward and the SHIELD doctors had turned away, or backed into corners, or gently stepped aside. But in Phillip's room, several of them were fawning over his offspring, eyes glassy, mouths slack. It seemed he had a certain gift for thrall. Steve, of course, liked the way little red sparks danced in Phillip's eyes, but he was Phillip's father; he hadn't expected humans to take to it in the same way. Phillip seemed embarrassed by it. 

" -- he's charming the doctors," he said. 

"That'd be a new one," Tony replied, and Steve tilted his head. "Dad said people were afraid of you. I see the way they avert their eyes." 

"It's not something I do on purpose." 

"I imagine not. I have a question for you as a scientist."

Steve gave him a small smile. "Well, you wouldn't be the first." 

"You said a name before he...." Tony made a dramatic gesture. "Earlier. S'Dap? S'Dalap?"

"It was his true name. It..."

"Summoned him?"

"No. It completed him, I guess. It made him whole, to know his name."

"So you have a....monster name?" Tony asked, fascinated. Steve saw his father in his face, but only as an echo. 

He shook his head. "A true name, and no. I'm just Steve Rogers, I guess. Phillip did, because he was...natural offspring. When I spawned him, I knew it."

"You know, Peggy made it sound more romantic."

"Well, I did my best. Point is, nobody spawned me; I was made in a lab. And neither of us are anything compared to what we came from. Even the Hulk is -- " His mouth twisted. "He is as a gnat before their godhead."

"Well, that's eerie."

"It doesn't translate well."

"Do we need to worry about...where you came from?" Tony asked. "Peggy told me about the Godhammer -- not that she had it, just that it existed, that it could kill someone like you. She said you worried over it, and that you thought one day we'd need to use it."

"I did. I still do. That's a lot of power contained in a man, Tony."

"Well, you've met me."

Steve smiled at that, not bothering to hide his teeth, as he sometimes did around other people. 

"Should we be preparing for the day they rise or whatever?" Tony pressed. 

"Not yet. Not unless someone's dumb and talented enough to try and waken them. And anyway, you've got the Godhammer inside you. It -- well, it did enough. It could probably do more."

Tony tapped his hands on the casing of his arc reactor. "Good to know." 

*** 

The Avengers were very different from the Commandos. Steve was accustomed to walking amongst humans, and while most of the Commandos never let it show, he knew sometimes even Peggy had to avert her eyes. He accepted it, because the gains were greater than the losses. 

But here, now, he was weird among the weird. He knew he made Bruce uneasy, but Bruce contained a monster greater than Steve, and some part of both of them knew it. It lurked in every interaction, making for a situation where they were good friends who kept their distance. Thor seemed at ease with Steve, perhaps because his brother was uncanny too, but he was also the first to defend any of the others against him in a debate. It was as if Thor was physically incapable of siding with Steve, which was just as well. Natasha, he sensed, had grown accustomed to him, stiffening her spine through exposure, and where Natasha went, Clint Barton followed. 

He could tell Clint was troubled -- not just by what he had undergone at Loki's hand, but by the power that Steve carried, that Phil carried. It was just as well, Steve privately thought, that Phil's glamor didn't work on Clint; there had been enough tinkering in Clint's mind, and the man ought to be free, really free, to come or go as he pleased. That he chose to stay, even though he had visible reservations, set him apart in Steve's mind. He was the elect, as all the mortals who walked with Steve tended to be, but he was like...like a doubting Thomas. A man who would touch a god's wounds just to be sure. 

And then there was Tony, as numb to the terror of the gods as a fencepost. Or perhaps more like a rock in rough seas -- immersed but immune. 

Chance had brought them together and luck had bound them, but Steve knew it was better to find acolytes -- no -- _teammates_ who naturally "saw the angel" as Peggy used to say. 

He knew, as soon as he met Sam Wilson on a running path early one morning, that Sam would be one of his Chosen, like the Commandos and Peggy and the Avengers. When they met a second time, Steve was sure of it. Sam, like the others, was someone who would not just _survive_ him, but would be a friend. He felt like Peggy had; someone Steve could follow past the end of the world, if he had to. 

"You know, I've been reading up on you," Sam said, when he found Steve waiting for him at the start of his route one morning. 

"Yeah?" Steve asked, doing calf stretches, wondering if he could dare to unfurl his wings. He'd been reading up on Sam, too. SHIELD had good resources. 

"Yeah -- turns out a lot of the work on Rebirth came from my alma mater," Sam said, stretching. "You gonna keep lapping me today, or can we go a little slower than your usual?"

Steve grinned. "I'll pace you for a while. I thought most of the work was done in a basement in Brooklyn," he added, as Sam launched into a slow warm-up jog. 

"Ooh, that's classified still, don't tell me or the NSA'll get me," Sam said. "No, the early research was over in Europe, but I guess a lot of SSR researchers did time at Miskatonic."

Steve nearly stumbled. "Miskatonic?" he said. The name sounded familiar, but he couldn't remember why. 

"Yeah, it's up in New England. ROTC gave me a scholarship," Sam added. "It's...very white."

Erskine had mentioned it, Steve thought; he'd spent time studying there, working on the Serum. 

"Good science and medical programs. Great Divinity school if you're into that kind of thing. Biggest collection of occult books in the country," Sam added meaningfully, and Steve knew Sam had read one of _those_ books. The ones about where Captain America really came from. 

"What do you think I am, Sam?" Steve asked. 

Sam shrugged and picked up his pace a little. "Far as I'm concerned you're a vet, and kind of a cocky asshole." 

Steve nodded. "Gonna lap you, be right back," he said, and sped up, laughing at Sam's yelling behind him. 

But in the days that followed, it felt like the word -- Miskatonic, some European corruption of an older name -- tugged at him. As much as Antarctica, that must be where he had come from. 

He must have talked about it at least a couple of times, because Natasha picked up on the signals almost immediately, and one morning she showed up at his door with Sam and said, "Pack up for a road trip."

"Excuse me?" Steve asked. He didn't even know Natasha knew Sam. 

"She wants me to take you around Miskatonic," Sam said. He looked sidelong at her and mouthed _help me_. "I did not feel like I could say no to the Black Widow."

"I'm charming," Natasha said cheerfully. 

_Please_ , Sam mouthed.

Steve gave up and packed a bag. 

***

When they reached the university, Sam took them to the quad first, then past his old dorm building to the library. Steve hadn't been on many college campuses, but this one seemed like a contradiction; the buildings were tall and gothic, like fairytale castles rendered in miniature, but they seemed to squat over the landscape, huddled in the gentle rolling knolls of the quad and its surroundings. The library glared down at them with two yellow-lit windows like eyes above the portico.

Inside, most of the light came from a domed skylight, and the air had a closed-in feeling to it. Sam seemed right at home. 

A small room off the main library had grated bars over every shelf. Steve peered through them at the spines of books in foreign languages, some of which seemed to move out of the corner of the eye. 

An elderly woman in tweed watched them from an enormous desk. 

"I remember Erskine mentioning a library," he said thoughtfully. "He got the sample that made the functioning serum while he was here, I think."

"Once in a while we'd have someone in the pre-med classes who was doing a dual degree in Divinity," Sam said, fingers hooked over one of the bars. Natasha was wandering further into the stacks, blending into the shadows in the way she had. "They were always the weirdest ones. One of them did a thesis on string theory and the occult. He disappeared night before graduation. Hey, Steve?"

"Mm?" Steve asked, turning to look at him. Sam pointed to his eyes. "What?"

"Your eyes went totally black, man." 

"Happens sometimes," Steve murmured. "I wonder -- "

"You're looking for the Necronomicon," a voice said, incredibly loud in the silent library. The woman in tweed cleared her throat. "The Erskine volume."

"The Erskine _volume?_ " Steve asked. 

"He annotated a version while he was here," she said. "It's our most requested book from the Divinity students. We don't approve most requests." 

"Why not?" Sam asked. 

She fixed him with small, sharp eyes, then looked back at Steve. "You can go into the reading room, Captain Rogers," she said, handing him a ring of keys and pointing at a door with a padlock on it. He didn't bother to ask how she knew it was him. 

***

In the little reading room, there was a book chained to the desk. There was a video camera in the corner. 

Steve wasn't sure how long he spent in the reading room, poring over the book and Erskine's notes on it. He found the name of his ancestor, marked with a little star and the words "probably The Source". He found a prophecy about a monster fathered on a mortal woman that looked pretty familiar, and one about the Chitauri that he felt he could mark "fulfilled". He found a ritual to burn Shining Maroc, The Star Of Insanity, into a mortal man, and figured he'd found Bruce's problem.

And in the very back, so far into the book that even Erskine had stopped making notes in the margins, he found an essay. _Bahatan, the Bastard of Rh'Tat, and His Summoning._

Carefully, he copied out the passage into his notebook. It smelled like burning paper every time he set a pen to the page. 

When he came out, Sam and Natasha were sitting with the librarian, drinking coffee. 

"You find what you were looking for?" Natasha asked. 

"Not quite," Steve said, holding up his notebook. "But I think I found a map." 

"Have an eye to what you're doing," the librarian said. "Most men can't even read the book without going mad."

"Thank you, ma'am," Steve said. "I'll eat it when I'm finished."

"See that you do," she replied. Steve ran his tongue over the edge of his teeth. They'd cut paper well enough. 

***

Steve was of the line of Rh'Tat, Maker of Knots, and as far as he knew he had no siblings anymore, but he was certain he wasn't Bahatan himself. For one thing, Bahatan had many stump-limbed tentacles and contained within him shards of silver, and could be enslaved to the purposes of man. Steve was pretty sure that wasn't him. 

But any spawn of Rh'Tat was kin, and Steve yearned for kinship; Phillip was his offspring, of course, but that was different, a happy duty but a duty nonetheless. And the Great Old Ones didn't care for the spirit of a god grafted onto a mortal soul. If he could speak with the Bastard of Rh'Tat, perhaps -- well, he'd know more, or something. 

Sam asked to see the notebook, but after about three sentences he closed it again and said, "Maybe I'm just gonna let you handle that." 

The summoning required a place of Barren Water, which Sam said was what they called the well that had gone bad after the meteor shower a century ago -- there was a wasteland of a former farm a few miles north of Miskatonic where a meteor had come down. The students talked about it but never went there. The ritual also required a new moon, which was pretty much upon them by the time Steve made up his mind. 

"I should come with you," Natasha said. 

"We both should," Sam said, but Steve could tell a Miskatonic graduate wanted nothing to do with the blasted heath. 

"I'll be fine," he said, and rustled his wings, which usually made Natasha back off. 

He put the notebook in his backpack and left on foot, in the dark, confident that he wouldn't be bothered. The ritual itself wasn't complicated -- 

But when he reached what was unmistakably the blasted heath, someone had beat him to it.

It was tough to lurk in a gray, grassless wasteland, but the remains of a dry-stone wall skirted the dessicated house with its rancid well. Steve crouched and watched. There were three men in black, hoods raised, chanting softly, the chant Steve had carefully copied out in a tongue no longer known to the memory of man. At least, most men. 

Then one of them raised a knife, and there was an animal shriek, and the smell of blood filled the air -- 

Steve stood, not even realizing he'd moved. He could feel his wings spreading, the claws creaking as they thrust from the joints, the feathers blocking out what little light came from the stars. The men who had been chanting turned, but the naked man curled in the center of their chalk circle didn't move. A second before, a lamb had been bleeding to death there.

One of the men screamed when he saw Steve, and collapsed still screaming. The other two covered their eyes, but not fast enough; one of them barely got his hands up before he was clawing at his face in terror, and the other began to bleed from his mouth. All three were dead before he reached them. 

He threw one of the convulsing bodies aside and knelt in the chalk circle that enclosed the body of the thing they'd summoned. 

"Bucky?" he asked softly, the English sitting uneasily in his mouth. 

The creature raised its head. Its hair was wild, and its eyes were completely black. Its left shoulder ended in a ragged stump; even as Steve watched, a tendril of black smoke emerged from it, curving around itself and solidifying into a silver arm. 

_I am Bahatan, the bastard of Rh'Tat,_ it said. _Who in the name of the Great Sleeper is Bucky?_

Steve roared, a bellow of rage that broke the sky, something he hadn't allowed since Bucky's death seventy years previous. 

***

In a shabby motel near Miskatonic University, Natasha startled at the distant noise, at the unholy lights that seemed to stream across the sky. Sam pulled her away from the window gently.

"Don't look outside," he said softly. 

"Why?" she asked.

"Sometimes at Miskatonic you learn when not to look."


	3. Chapter 3

Steve called Phillip, because he didn't know what else to do with the dark-eyed, broken creature he'd found on the blasted heath and brought back, incongruously, to their motel room. S'Dalap, with the yellow-bone fangs and gift of thrall, sent them away. Leaving his brother with his spawn was the hardest thing Steve had ever done. 

"I don't know what he remembers," Phillip said tiredly, late that night. Sam had recruited a couple of students from his former fraternity to guard the motel room, and then brought Steve and Phillip and Natasha to a little diner where they could sit in a booth and expect reasonable privacy. "Getting anything out of him was work. He's stronger than I am."

"He's older than you," Steve said. "Could you find out anything?"

"A little. It's Hydra."

"Hydra!" Steve blinked. "But -- that all ended with the war."

"Cut off one head..." Natasha said. 

"We still uncover little cells now and again. It's a dying religion, but it's not dead yet," Phillip added, sipping his coffee. "And they must have known the Godhammer didn't really kill him."

"Well, they invented it," Sam said.

"They've been summoning and binding him," Phillip said. "Pulling him into reality when they needed him, sending him back when they didn't. I don't know where," he said, holding up a hand to forestall Steve's question. "And in the end I don't know if it matters." 

"What matters is what to do with him now," Natasha said pragmatically. Sam nodded agreement. "If he's dangerous, we have to turn him over to SHIELD, Steve. If you can help him that's great, but we all know..." She spread her hands on the table. "The power you have wasn't meant..."

"I know," Steve said, saving her from having to say what none of them really wanted to hear. Sam waved for more coffee, and the waitress came over reluctantly, shooting sidelong anxious looks at Steve. Then Phillip smiled at her, and all was forgotten. 

"Anything else for you all?" she asked, looking straight at Phillip as she poured Sam's coffee. 

"No, thank you," Sam said pointedly.

"On the house, sugar," she told Phillip, and departed. 

"Creeps me the hell out," Natasha said, into her coffee. 

"Can't help it," Phillip replied calmly. "Working on it." He turned to Steve. "You're going to have to make a call."

"Will you back my play if I do?" Steve asked, including Natasha and Sam in the question.

"Of course," Sam said. Natasha nodded. 

_Yes, father,_ S'Dalap said, hissing out from between Phillip's teeth, the tone of a blood oath. 

"How long do we have before SHIELD gets suspicious?" Steve asked. 

"SHIELD?" Natasha asked. "Maybe a week or two. Can't bring him back to the Tower without Tony knowing, though."

"What's the problem with that?" Steve asked. "He's liable to be on our side, isn't he?" 

Natasha and Phillip exchanged a look. 

"You wanna deal me in on this?" Steve asked, glancing between them.

"Do you know how Tony's parents died?" Natasha asked.

"Sure, I got it in briefing when I came back," Steve said. "They were killed when he was what, nineteen?"

"Murdered," Sam said.

"What's that got to do with this?" Steve asked. 

"The Stark murders are one of the most well-known modern unsolved cases," Phillip said quietly. "Well, technically unsolved. We know Obadiah Stane ordered it -- at least, we know that now. We still don't know who did it. Not even SHIELD knows. Except..."

"They were torn apart," Natasha said bluntly. Steve blinked. "They were attacked on a darkened country road and ripped to shreds. The police thought it was an animal at first, but the evidence didn't hold up, and animals won't go near the site -- cop dogs turned on their handlers when they tried to bring them in. People think it was the Mothman, or aliens, or the Jersey Devil. They _invented_ a monster to describe what was done to the Starks. The Beast of the Backroads." 

"Whatever happened to them wasn't human and it wasn't animal," Phillip said. "You were asleep, and I wasn't...born, not like this, not yet, nor was Hulk. SHIELD believed Obadiah Stane had ties to Hydra. Who we now know had a trained godling on call."

"Bucky might have killed the Starks," Steve said. The words felt like lead weights dropping. Bucky might have murdered Howard and his wife. 

_Bucky is Bahatan, as I am S'Dalap,_ Phillip said. "Hydra used him. He didn't choose any of this. It's not his fault." 

"Somehow I don't think a Tony Stark's going to care when it's the guy who killed his parents," Sam said. 

"We don't know Bahatan was the weapon. Not for sure," Steve said. 

"If it occurred to us, it'll occur to him. He'll know, if we bring home a stray monster Hydra was dragging in and out of reality," Natasha said. "It won't take him long. And the Godhammer is literally in his chest."

Steve pressed his palms to his forehead. "Bucky's my responsibility," he said. "I made him. And I abandoned him."

"You couldn't know he'd survived the Godhammer," Natasha said. 

"There was no body."

"So? I've seen what you can do to a human," she replied. Phillip made a sound of protest. "No, let's be honest about this. If you don't want a body found, no body is left. You couldn't know. Yes, you're responsible for him, but that's where you should look now. At him. Not at yourself."

"Natasha -- " Sam began, but Steve shook his head.

"She's right. It doesn't do any good taking the blame if I don't fix this. We have to find a way to help him. We have to get him -- "

"Out of here," Phillip said. "No offense, Sam, but your alma mater is a level of strange that's making even the monsters uncomfortable."

"We're number one," Sam said, grinning. 

"Somewhere safe," Natasha said. "Then figure out how to put him back together." 

"What if we can't?" Sam asked. 

"We'll work that out if we need to," Steve said. 

As they left, he heard Phillip mutter, _You made, and you can unmake._

 _Be careful I don't unmake you if I hear that again,_ Steve replied. He smiled, but his teeth were very sharp when he did so. 

***

They took him to Sam's place, in the end. The neighborhood was very quiet. The neighbors' cats ran spitting, and the birds stopped coming to the birdfeeder in his backyard.

"If this makes my lawn shrivel up and my trees die, you're paying for my landscaping," Sam told Steve, earning himself a tired smile. 

"I appreciate it, Sam, I really do," Steve replied, as Sam led them through the house and into the spare room. Natasha was rummaging in the kitchen, looking for something to eat; Phillip had gone to speak to the neighbors. Steve was sure they'd happily agree with the calm, smiling man who asked them to keep their distance for a few weeks. 

Bucky was quiet and obedient, and sat down on the bed without a complaint; Steve pulled his shoes off, and watched Sam leave before kneeling next to the bed. 

"Bahatan," he said softly.

 _You talk like them but you speak like me,_ Bahatan replied. 

_I am he who made you,_ Steve replied. 

Bucky's eyes closed in a very slow blink, then opened again. _What am I?_

"None of us know, not really," Steve said. "I was made in a lab. I made you in another. We were soldiers together, once. Do you remember?"

_My eyes were sometimes blue. Once I was --_

"Whole," Steve said, eyes flicking to the silver hand.

Bucky shook his head.

"Once I was less," he hissed. 

***

Having Phillip in the house helped. For one, it meant Steve could leave without worrying Bucky would savage Sam, or worse. If they wanted to keep Bucky's presence a secret, they had to maintain at least some kind of cover. And it seemed like he genuinely helped -- he could draw more out of Bucky than Steve could have, and if Bucky was the one keeping the birds and the suburban wildlife out of Sam's backyard, at least Phillip was keeping his plants alive. 

Bucky was beginning to remember -- or at least, he was beginning to remember his life before the Godhammer, and to forget wherever he'd ended up after. He woke screaming sometimes, spitting curses in ancient languages, but when Steve visited he knew who he was, and he even smiled at him.

It was two weeks before Tony found out.

They should have expected it when there was a knock on the door, since nobody else would come anywhere near. But when Steve opened the door he wasn't expecting Tony, eyes blazing, fists clenched around his palm-unit reactors. 

"Tony," Steve said warily, and Tony didn't even say anything. Instead he surged forward and caught Steve by the throat. It was so sudden and shocking that he actually managed to carry him backwards, into the house and up against a wall of the living room, before Steve found his footing.

Instinctively, he spread his wings, but as soon as they manifested there was the sound of metal against metal, and then a hot pain; when he looked to the left, he saw a dagger plunged into one wing, through the feather and bone and into the wall. It shouldn't be able to pin him, it shouldn't even be able to cut him, but there it was, holding him flat. 

"Stay there," Tony snarled, and turned into the hallway. Natasha wasn't there, and Phillip had gone out for breakfast. Sam came running out of his bedroom, but a repulsor blast next to his head (aimed to warn rather than damage, Steve could see even as he struggled with the dagger) sent him dropping straight to the floor. 

"Steve?" Bucky's voice called, and he emerged from the guest room just as Tony reached it. Steve watched, helpless, through the doorway as the two faced each other.

"Please, Tony," he called. "Please don't kill him, you don't know -- "

" _You_ shut the fuck up," Tony replied. His hand moved, and Steve yelled, but Bucky didn't flinch, and Tony didn't touch him. He reached up instead and pulled the Godhammer out of his chest, the cords still attached, hanging out of his body. 

"You know what this is?" Tony asked. Bucky looked at it, looked at his face, and nodded jerkily. "Did you do it?" 

"What?" Bucky rasped. 

"Did you kill Maria Stark?" Tony asked, stepping forward, and Bucky still didn't move. "Did you rip her to pieces _like a fucking animal, monster?_ "

"Stark," Sam said, rising slowly to his feet.

"Not your fight, Wilson," Tony replied, replacing the Godhammer in his chest. Nobody in the room thought for a second that made it less dangerous. 

"It's in my house, man, it's a little my fight," Sam replied. 

"Sam, help me," Steve pleaded, still tugging fruitlessly at the dagger, but Tony was a column of fury between Sam and Steve. 

"You and I have some business," Tony announced, turning back to Bucky. "And big brother isn't going to rescue you. So you tell me. Did you murder my parents?"

"Tony Stark," Bucky said, a note of recognition in his voice. He looked at the Godhammer again, then back up. 

And then he dropped to his knees.

"Bucky, no!" Steve yelled, as Bucky leaned forward, baring his neck. 

Tony reached out, Steve never knew afterwards what for, but before he could touch Bucky, the blue light of the Godhammer surged. Its brightness filled the room, and Steve let go of the dagger to shield his eyes, yelling in pain. Tony clutched his chest, doubling over, gasping for air like a drowning man. 

Sam said afterward that Bucky reached up to catch him. Steve couldn't see from his angle; all he could see was Tony slumping to the ground. He began struggling again, frantic, because the Godhammer must be close now, must be touching Bucky, and the last time -- 

Then the light went out, and instead of cowering before the Godhammer, Bucky was kneeling over Tony Stark. Bucky's skin was glowing blue, little pulses of light rushing over it, and the same blue glow was...dripping, leaking, into Tony's face. 

The blue faded, except for two little spots of it, deep in Tony's eyes. The Godhammer flickered back to life in his chest. 

"Sam," Steve gasped desperately, and Sam, who'd been staring in shock, shook himself awake and ran across the room, grasping the dagger and pulling it out. It grated across bone and Steve winced, the wings folding away into nothing with shudders of pain. He went to Bucky, tugging him off the floor and away as Sam crouched by Tony, checking his pulse. 

"No, he won't -- " Bucky struggled out of Steve's grip, pushing him away, the first time in weeks he'd shown any initiative. "He won't hurt me now." 

"Bucky, just -- "

"No, Steve!" Bucky shouted in his face, shoving him hard enough to get them both out of the doorway. In the hall, Tony was sitting up, shaking his head, blinking his eyes. The pinprick blue glow in each pupil hadn't faded. 

"What the _fuck_ did you just do?" he demanded. 

There was a soft noise from the open front door, a throat clearing. 

"I'm a little curious myself," Phillip said, a bakery box tied with twine in one hand, a tray of coffees in the other. 

***

"I feel different," Tony said, once Phillip had settled Steve, soothed Bucky, and made sure Sam wasn't hurt. He flitted about between them all, calming with a touch or a murmured word, and for once Steve let Phillip work his thrall even on himself. "I see -- differently, there's -- "

"Clarity," Bucky said. "Like waking up from sleep."

Tony nodded, as if fifteen minutes before he hadn't been trying to kill him.

"I can see -- " Tony's eyes, still lit by pinpricks of electric blue, went distant for a moment before snapping back. "Physically. Real-time, things are clearer. It's not just mental clarity."

Sam looked uneasily at Steve. "You were a genius before," he said to Tony. "Maybe I read too many scifi novels as a kid, but geniuses rarely do good when they get _more_ clarity than they already had."

Tony was thoughtful, sweeping hair out of his eyes with his hands. Phillip passed behind him at the kitchen table, fingertips brushing lightly over his shoulders, and Tony frowned.

"What were we saying?" Tony asked.

"Well, at least we know how to stop you if you go all mad scientist on us," Sam said. "Speaking of which," he added, and set the dagger that had pinned Steve lightly on the table. "Not to stir up more trouble, but this is some bad mojo." 

"Insurance policy," Tony said. 

"You should have told me you had it," Steve replied.

"I would have, but Aunt Peggy told me not to," Tony informed him. 

There was a long silence.

"Margaret Carter knew exactly what you were, as much as any person ever did," Tony continued. "She knew when you came back you'd be something different. More different. She knew you might be dangerous. When my parents died -- " and he glanced at Bucky, who winced, " -- she didn't give me the Godhammer. But she gave me the dagger, and she told me it might work. Might not. Guess now we know." 

"How about I keep this," Sam said quietly. Steve, looking around the table, realized Sam was the only pure mortal among them at this point -- and he had come from Miskatonic. He knew when not to look, and when to secure himself against devils. 

"Yeah, that might be good," Tony agreed. 

"Is she still alive?" Bucky asked, startling them all. 

"Yes," Steve said, as Tony was opening his mouth. "I see her. Once in a long while. On good days she knows who I am." He shrugged, looking down at his coffee. "On bad days, well, we get to reunite all over again." 

"She doesn't recognize me," Phillip said. "Not since I manifested."

"She calls me Howard," Tony said. "She might not know you, even on a good day." 

"Maybe I could see her sometime," Bucky said. 

***

After that, there was no reason to impose on Sam, but without the protection of Phillip's presence, the neighbors turned ugly; Bucky and his chaperones hadn't even left before people began spitting on Sam's doorstep, or worse. It was like all of their fear and suspicion were unleashed, now that the others were leaving. 

"Come to the Tower with us," Tony urged, his blue-flame eyes glittering. "You don't belong here any more than we did. You belong with the Avengers."

"Just 'cause I came from Miskatonic -- "

"That's not why, and you know it," Steve said. 

"But it won't hurt," Tony added. 

"Won't hurt what?" Natasha asked. 

"I'm going to rework the Iron Man armor. It will...need it," Tony said vaguely, gesturing to his eyes. "I could use a Miskatonic man. And I know about you, I did my homework," he added. 

"What about him?" Steve asked sharply. 

"How'd you like the Falcon rig back?" Tony asked. Sam's head snapped around and a hunger filled his face. 

"You could do that?" he asked. 

"Yes," Tony said simply.

***

A month later, Sam leapt off the balcony of Stark Tower, spread his wings, and spun barrel rolls around an Iron Man decorated with sigils that glowed blue against the gray sky. 

"You knew he would be your elect," Phillip said to Steve. 

"Our elect," Steve reminded him. 

_The spawn of the Old Ones gather their army,_ Phillip said. "What do you suppose we do it for?" 

"We maybe shouldn't be so impatient to find out," Steve said. "For now, all I care about is burning Hydra down, root and branch." 

"And then?"

"I knew the world would need me for something. I suppose I'll know when it hits," Steve replied. _The Old Ones may rise. Your great ancestor said someday It may destroy us, or we may destroy It. But that might not be for millennia yet, if it happens at all._

"You don't speak of It." 

"Someday I'll take you to see It where It rests," Steve said in an undertone. "It'll like you better than It liked me." 

"What about...?" Phil's eyes, with their little dancing points of red light, flicked to Bruce, who was taking notes on the first test flight of the new Iron Man armor. 

"He's not of our kin," Steve replied. "Whatever he is now, it came from something else. Some other...family line." 

"And Bahatan?"

"Your uncle? Oh, Rh'Tat will hate him," Steve said.

"Where is he, anyway?"

"Doing a favor for an old friend," Steve answered.

***

Bucky could seem almost normal, if he really put in the effort; he did for the staff of Peggy's nursing home, who just saw a shy young man, probably a grandchild or great-grandchild, signing in to visit Margaret Carter. Commander Peggy, as most of them affectionately called her, was a high-security patient, but Mr. Barnes presented all the right ID, and he was on the list, so they let him through. 

"Steve said you'd come, sometime," Peggy said, when she saw him lurking in the doorway. He waited for a shudder, but he should have known better; Peggy had always been clear-eyed and fearless about...them. "Come in, James. I know why you're here."

He nodded, taking the chair she gestured to. She regarded him with bright eyes. She looked ancient, ageless, and very tired. 

"Steve told me you came back, and I hardly believed him," she said. "And then I forgot, and he told me again..." She shook her head ruefully. "My mind is going, as I'm sure he's mentioned."

"He said something like that. I know a thing or two about it, if it's any consolation," Bucky replied. 

"Yes, I know you do. I know that's why you came," she said softly. He looked down at his hands. "There will be no resurrection for me, James, not like for the two of you."

"I wish there would," he said softly. 

"Don't," she replied, voice still gentle. "Listen, I lived a good, long life. I saved the world a few times. I raised a good son and two strong daughters. I have more joys than regrets, but I don't want to die trapped in the past."

"Hadn't thought of it that way," Bucky admitted.

"Do you remember," she said, "seventy years ago, when I told you the truth?"

"I didn't remember, not until recently."

"But you do now," she prompted.

"Yeah. You said I was beyond knowing," he said. 

"Are you still?" 

"Maybe. Don't know."

"Tell me the truth, James," she said. He stood up and bent to kiss her forehead, and when he leaned back, she was watching him keenly, eagerly.

He lifted his face and roared, a sound without dimension, which was for her alone. He released all the tension, all the carefully built screens between himself and this world, and he let his true form be seen. The full glory and horror of Bahatan, the Bastard of Rh'Tat, was revealed on Earth for the first and last time unto a mortal woman. 

"You are beautiful," she said. And then, "Thank you."

The hospital staff didn't see Mr. Barnes leave. When they checked on Peggy, half an hour or so later, they found her dead, a peaceful smile on her face. The doctor who examined her -- by coincidence, a man who had done his medical degree at Miskatonic -- neglected to note in his examination that her corneas had been burned clear away at some point just before death. 

***

They mourned, in their own way, Steve and Bucky and Phillip. But Peggy had been slipping away for some time, and once the funeral was over, life had to begin again. 

Nick Fury had called them the Avengers Initiative before anyone, even Fury, had truly known what they would avenge. Now it became clear that one of their duties would be to burn away what Steve and Bucky's war had left behind. Bucky knew enough of Hydra and its ways that with Sam's help he could find Hydra bases, pick out covens of Hydra agents who had raised him, and show the others how to burn them to the ground.

They sometimes had to be careful. Bruce, of course, could drive ordinary people mad; even the Chosen, Clint and Natasha and Sam, couldn't witness his alter ego for long, though Thor seemed to take a positive joy in him on the rare occasions Thor was on Earth with them. Steve and Bucky were terrifying in combat, and Tony's repulsors, driven now by the fusion of himself and the Godhammer, brought new and literal meaning to the phrase _purifying fire_. 

"Are you sure this isn't weird for you?" Sam asked Natasha one afternoon, after they'd razed a Hydra stronghold disguised as a midwestern fertilizer factory. She and Clint were sharing a liverwurst sandwich; Sam would rather starve, but fortunately Clint had packed him a ham-and-cheese. 

"What, picnicking post-combat?" she asked. 

"Gotta fuel up," Clint said. Down below, there were screams of madness, and the odd bellow. "Sounds like Bucky's enjoying himself." 

"No, just...what are we doing, running with them?" Sam asked. "Normal just like...flew out the window and I didn't even notice."

"Someone has to," Natasha said. "Someone has to be their humanity." 

"I like it. When I joined the circus I thought it'd be weird and magical and mysterious, like _going to_ the circus," Clint said. "Turned out it was a lot of shoveling elephant shit and being mean-spirited about the rubes." 

"Romantic," Natasha said to him.

"Maybe, but I always wanted there to be more to the world than what we could see," Clint said. "Now I know there is. None of us were ever going to get normal," he said. Sam nodded silently; after Riley, he'd known life would never be ordinary again. Natasha's life hadn't even held the possibility of normality. "Hey, do you see that?" Clint added, squinting.

"Do you think I see what your elf eyes see?" Sam asked, but he followed Clint's gaze. 

"Down there. On our two," Clint said, rising into a crouch. Natasha stood up, reached above her head, and pulled herself into a tree, a backup ambush just in case. Sam still couldn't see anything, but he reached for his guns. 

"Stay here," Clint said, and Sam nodded. Now, squinting hard in the dusk, he could identify a shadow moving slowly away from the remains of the base, unnatural in shape. It shambled unevenly, the sunset lighting it red.

No, not the sunset -- 

Clint took off running from one direction; from the base down below, Steve was running as well, wings not spread but trailing behind him, sharp edged and dangerous. Bucky, head lifting like a dog on scent, took off after him a second later, but neither of them could beat Tony, who touched down next to the staggering shape, reached out, and was immediately blown off his feet, through a tree, and into the underbrush. 

Sam saw the shape shudder and seem to collapse into the hillside, and Steve leapt, wings outstretched. Darkness shot ahead of Bucky like a wave -- 

And Clint skidded to a stop, throwing his body down atop the glowing red figure, arms wrapping around what a second later looked like shoulders, one hand cradling a small head. 

"Don't!" Natasha and Clint yelled in unison, and with a staticky, air-splitting shriek, the darkness heaved, grinding to a halt. Steve, already airborne, spread his wings to slow himself, body jerking forward, and then tumbled gracelessly to the earth.

Sam approached slowly. Bucky was frozen to the spot, and Steve was picking himself up, heavily, as if the air weighed on him. When he was close enough he could pick out the shapes more clearly -- Clint, curled around a young girl, half of the shambling "monster" from the shadows. The other half, a pale, unconscious boy she'd been dragging, lay behind Clint, so that he was blocking most of both of them, but not all of either, from Steve's wrath. 

"Get Phil," Sam ordered, reaching for the boy. 

"They're Hydra," Steve warned, shaking his head, looking confused. 

"They're children, come on," Sam said. When he reached for the boy, the girl shrieked and threw Clint off, and the boy's body glowed red; Sam held up his hands in innocence, and found himself face to face with a girl with glowing red eyes. 

"I just want to help him," he said. The girl clenched her fists, and behind her, Steve collapsed. Down below, Bucky put both his hands to his head and screamed, but it was an earthly, mortal scream, not the dimension-splitting bellow of rage he was capable of. 

"You're not helping," Sam said. 

The girl blinked at him. 

"Rude," Clint added, dusting himself down. She looked sidelong, then at her own hands. Slowly, the red glow faded. 

"Clint, get Phil," Sam ordered. "Natasha, check on Tony, keep him wherever he is."

Clint scrambled away towards where Phillip was trying to calm Bucky down. Natasha, from the shadows, flitted away. 

"Now it's just you and me," Sam coaxed. "Can I have a look, make sure he's okay?" 

The girl nodded. Sam checked the boy's pulse, lifted an eyelid, felt for broken bones.

"What's your name?" he asked, as he worked. 

"It was Wanda," she said softly. 

"Yeah? Nice name. How about your friend?"

"He's my brother. He was Pietro." 

Sam nodded. Was-Pietro seemed okay, just unconscious.

"Why do you say 'was'?" he asked. "Do you have different names now?"

"The men who took us called us different names," she said. "After we were changed. After we were witnesses."

"Witnesses to what?" Sam asked, the hairs rising on his skin. The air was heavy, the way it was at Miskatonic around the solstices. 

"To the Achaphe," she said, and Sam's blood ran cold. 

"What are your names now?" he asked, but she shook her head. "Okay, that's...that's probably good. Can I call you Wanda, is Wanda okay?"

"Yeah, okay," she whispered. 

Clint returned with Phillip at that point; without hesitating, the girl reached her arms out for Phillip, who scooped her up, and neither she nor the crazy red glow objected when Clint picked up her brother. 

"What is it?" Phillip asked, seeing Sam's face. 

"Do you know what the Achaphe is?" Sam asked. Clint shook his head. Phillip nodded. "They've seen it." 

Phillip's arms tightened around the girl. 

"See to the Captain," he said. "Make sure the others are all right. Barnes is mobile but he's not in a good way. We'll get the kids somewhere safe."

Sam nodded. Clint gave him a grateful look as they hurried away. The boy had his head on Clint's shoulder; when Sam turned to watch them go, he saw the boy's eyes open briefly, and glow green. 

***

"I have the headache from the depths of the underworld itself, and you all would know," Tony said, as they regrouped in the quinjet. Bucky was washing his face, because his ears had bled. Steve was pale and silent. "Did I go through a tree?"

"Yes," Bucky and Sam said in unison.

"Oh, well, good that at least I didn't hallucinate that. You say Agent's got the demon children?"

"Not demons," Steve murmured. 

"The heck you say." 

"Do any of you know what the Achaphe is?" Sam asked. Steve shook his head; Natasha looked blank. Bucky frowned. 

"Sounds familiar," he said. 

"He's an old god of the north. Older than Odin. Older than the chaos before Odin," Sam said. 

"Where are you going with this?" Tony asked tiredly.

"The girl said she'd seen the Achaphe," Sam said. "And I'd have to look it up to be sure but I'm pretty positive the Hydra was based on the Achaphe."

"Nine heads?" Tony asked.

"Not the Greek Hydra. The Hydra you see on their clothes. The skull. With the serpents," Sam said. He held his fingers up to his mouth, letting them hang down like tentacles from his lip. 

"Are you saying Hydra has an Old One?" Steve said, alarmed. 

"Like, what, in a trunk somewhere?" Tony managed. 

"They had me," Bucky reminded him. Tony tilted his head, acknowledging the point.

"We need to talk to the kids," Steve said. Sam held up a hand.

"Coulson's got them. He'll make sure they're safe," he said. "Let's get the hell out of here, and we'll figure it out once everyone's calmed down. I gotta talk to Thor, and look some shit up."

"What happens if Hydra does have the Hat Shopping?" Tony called, as Sam headed for the pilot's seat, shedding his rig. 

"We're all in a lot of trouble," Sam said under his breath, as he raised the hatch and lifted them off.


	4. Chapter 4

When Sam checked in with Jane, he found out Thor was offworld, dealing with various messes as prince of Asgard; the destruction of the Bifrost and a near-incursion by Dark Elves (Dark Elves, for Jesus' sake) had kept him and the royal family busy. Jane didn't know where he was, and sounded annoyed by it, but she promised to put him in touch as soon as he was back planetside. 

"Do you need to go to Miskatonic?" Natasha asked Sam, as he hung up the phone and tipped his chair back thoughtfully. 

Bruce was looking after Tony, quietly redirecting him every time he tried to get a drink (scotch or coffee), and Steve and Bucky were in quiet conference in a corner of the kitchen. Clint had briefly texted to say the kids were secure, and that they'd call in once they could get a secure line set up. In theory, Sam could be at Miskatonic in under an hour, using the quinjet. 

"Maybe," Sam said. He'd feel better if Steve didn't look so haunted, and if anyone at all knew more about the Achaphe than he did. He was the fly guy, the wing man; being the authority on the weird shit they all got up to wasn't his job. "But I don't know that they'd let me read what I need. Or that I could handle it. I'm not..."

"Like Steve." Natasha smiled. "You do what he does, though. Only slower."

"Most of what he does. This..." Sam shook his head. 

"Okay, well, what do you know about the Achaphe?" Natasha said. "Where did you hear the name? Miskatonic?"

"Freshman year, there's a foundation course," Sam said. "We're all supposed to be taking the same course, but teachers change it up based on what they like, what interests them. I had one of the old guard, he must have been a million years old and born crazy. We should have been studying the history of the school and the impact its students have had on the world, but he was one of the Divinity teachers, so he liked to talk about all the nutty-ass mystics we put out. I genuinely wondered what kind of nonsense I'd let myself be talked into when I took the scholarship."

"What did he say about Achaphe?"

"It was years ago," Sam said, rolling his neck, hearing the vertebrae pop. "I don't remember the details, but he said there was a society of students who raised the Devil, which for Miskatonic is pretty tame. They made a pact for success in their lives, but when the Devil came to collect, they'd been so successful that they were stronger than he was." 

Natasha's lips curved in a small smile. "Clever men."

"Not that clever. See, in the theology they teach up there, the Devil's just one of the old gods, and there are a lot worse than him in the outer darkness," Sam said. "So Satan woke the Achaphe, and one by one he brought it before them."

"What happened?" 

"Well, the legend goes they all died of horror. But one of the kids a year above me looked into it. They didn't die of horror. They vanished, or killed themselves, or went insane. Except for one, who lived to be a hundred and four. He was the last one -- when everyone but him was...taken care of, the Achaphe wouldn't go back to the realm of forgotten gods. He wanted to stay. So when the Devil took him to his last victim, he opened the man's eyes, and the spirit of the Achaphe possessed him, and he killed the Devil." 

Natasha blinked. "So who's running Hell?"

"That was in 1914," Sam said. "They say that's the year Hell opened, and it took a blood sacrifice to seal it again."

"Who?"

"Well." Sam shifted uncomfortably. "About thirty-seven million, counting the civilians. It took the first world war to close Hell up again."

"And what happened to the Achaphe?" 

Sam shrugged. "Nobody knows. Except now apparently Hydra's got him."

"So you're telling me the last time someone tampered with this thing, millions of people died in a brutal world war." 

"If I had to guess," Sam said carefully, "I'd say whatever happened during the war, the Achaphe probably ended up in Germany by 1939."

Natasha was silent, and Sam realized everyone else was, too. 

"Any word on how you kill it?" Steve asked, into the quiet. 

"You'd know more than I would," Sam pointed out. Tony's fingers drummed softly on the Godhammer, and Sam nodded at him. "Maybe."

"What happened the last time the Godhammer was used?" Tony asked. "Really used. When you..." He gestured at Bucky. 

"Don't ask me, I don't remember," Bucky said. 

"The last time it was used, it wasn't in someone's chest, powering their heart," Steve said. Tony opened his mouth. "No. The Godhammer is a last resort. There must be other artifacts, like the knife Peggy found. And we need to find out what those kids know, and what was done to them." 

"Did Coulson say where he had them?" Tony asked. 

"Didn't ask," Natasha said. "Less we know, the better. That girl nearly took all three of you out without throwing a punch. She pushed Tony through a tree with her mind." 

"Well, they can't stay hidden forever," Steve said. "Give 'em a little time. Let's get some shuteye while we can."

" _If_ we can," Bucky muttered. 

***

"I know you're not going to like this," Phillip said the next day, over a videoconference screen which fritzed with static every so often. Every time it did, his appearance shifted subtly, so most of the Avengers were trying not to look. 

"I never like anything you say," Tony pointed out.

"It's true, you're a great failure of mine," Phillip agreed. 

"What won't we like?" Steve asked. 

"I think the kids should stay where they are, away from the Tower," Phillip said. "And I don't think we should be overtly looking for artifacts of power with which to fight this thing." 

A series of looks ran around the room -- Steve to Sam, Sam to Steve and then Tony, Tony to Bucky, Natasha to Sam. 

"I'll bite," Tony said. "Why?" 

"For one thing, the children are unstable. They're in shock and they've been through a lot, and exposing them to...you, sorry," Phillip said with a grimace, "isn't going to help them even themselves out. I'm barely keeping them in check myself. Barnes, you remember how you were when we first retrieved you."

Bucky nodded, glancing back at Steve again. 

"Give me time. But also, I think putting more people with power in one place at one time is asking for trouble. Your lives are public. People are already saying Stark's got more power than he should have. Nobody likes that you have your own private army of superheroes funded by your billions," Phillip said to Tony, who shrugged.

"Someone's billions had to fund them. Better me than the taxpayers."

"Yes, but to the average taxpayer it still looks like you're bucking for world domination." Phillip held up his thumb and forefinger. "Just a little. You really want to augment that by adopting a girl who can blow the top of someone's head off?"

"How's her brother?" Natasha asked. 

"Well, either he can stop time or he can manipulate some extradimensional power to move real fast," Clint said, poking his head into frame. "Still working that one out. Good news is, she's a lot more stable when he's not unconscious from head trauma." 

"So what do you suggest we do?" Steve asked. 

"Let me handle the kids. Clint can go back and forth covertly if necessary. Bring Sam or Natasha here to talk to them -- people who don't..."

"Don't have anything wrong with them," Tony supplied.

"I was going to say, don't have the ability to set off whatever it is they've had done to them, but sure," Phillip said pleasantly. "Wrong works too."

"He's mostly talking about you," Bucky told Tony. 

"Ouch," Tony said. 

"So why shouldn't we look for tools that could help us?" Bucky asked. "Why not try to arm ourselves against it, if Hydra's got it?" 

"Because this kind of inquiry doesn't come around often," Sam said. "That community is tiny. You start asking around, eventually you'll find the right person, but there's no keeping it in a bottle after that. To find anything that could come close to fighting this thing, you'd be showing your hand to that whole world." 

"Peggy would have known," Bucky said softly. 

"We can't know that," Steve replied. "She gave us the Godhammer and the knife. If she had anything else, she would have given it to someone for safekeeping. Tony, or Phillip. Or Fury." 

"There's someone SHIELD's been watching," Phillip said thoughtfully. "I don't know how dependable he is, but he's new, relatively speaking. If he were making inquiries for us, it wouldn't be seen as unusual. And he has access to a good library." 

"Do we have a way of getting in touch that doesn't involve showing up on his doorstep and telling him SHIELD knows where he lives?" Tony asked. 

"Oh, you won't be able to find his doorstep unless he wants you to," Phillip said with a small smile. "But you should be able to call him."

"Like...mystically?" Sam asked. 

"No. His number's in Tony's phone." 

Tony looked startled. "What?"

"Stephen Strange." 

"Ste -- _Steve Strange_?" Tony asked. "Like, _Doctor_ Stephen Strange?" 

"He's a wizard now," Phillip said solemnly.

"Am I still concussed?" Tony asked Sam.

"Probably, but apparently you also have a wizard on speed dial," Sam said. 

"How do you know him?" Natasha asked. 

"I..." Tony still looked confused. "Before the Godhammer, I was having trouble with the arc reactor. I looked into some radical surgical options. Steve Strange was a brilliant surgeon -- I knew him from the New York society circuit, knew he could be discreet, so he was one of the people I talked to. He said if he couldn't do it, nobody could, and he couldn't." He frowned. "He fell off the map after that. PTSD from a car crash, I think." 

"SHIELD sources say he's back in New York."

"How many freaks is SHIELD watching?" Bruce asked.

"All of them," Phillip said calmly. 

Tony had taken out his phone and was frowning at it.

"JARVIS, mute the teleconference, throw my phone on speaker," he said, setting it on the table in front of him. The phone rang twice before there was an answering click. 

"Tony Stark," a deep voice said. "I thought you might call, sooner or later." 

"Stephen," Tony replied. "I heard you were back in New York."

"I can only imagine who you heard it from," Strange said, sounding drily amused. 

"And you're in private practice."

"Yes, of a sort. We're both in the same field now, I think." 

"You've seen the new armor."

"I have. Love to get a closer look at it."

"Well, you'll get a chance. Where's your office these days?" 

There was a quiet laugh. "The world, more or less, for my sins. But I have a consulting room on Bleecker Street, down in the Village. I'll send you the address. When can I expect you?" 

Tony cocked an eyebrow at the rest of the room. Steve made a little motion with his hand, finger outstretched, circling -- not today, tomorrow.

"Tomorrow morning be all right?" 

"Not before eleven."

"Eleven it is. Can I bring some friends?" 

"I'll lay on brunch," Strange said. He hung up without another word, and just as Tony was opening his mouth to say something, there was a spark of yellow light above his head. A business card fluttered out of the light, which vanished with a snap. 

"Yeah, that seems like...seems like the right guy," Sam said, as Tony picked up the card. 

"JARVIS, unmute," Tony said. "Coulson, did you get that?" 

"Most of it. I'd tread as lightly as you can," Phillip said. "We'll wait to hear from you."

He switched off the teleconference, and Tony tipped his chair back, blowing air through his lips at the ceiling. 

"I don't think all of us should go," Steve said. He glanced at Bucky, who raised his hands, _Not even interested._ "Bruce and Bucky should stay."

"No argument here," Bruce said. "It doesn't sound like somewhere an unstable monster should be."

"I'll stay with them," Natasha said. 

"Look, I'm not a scholar of this stuff," Sam said. "I may not be as useful to you as you think." 

"You're still the only one of us aside from Phillip who even knew the name of what those kids saw," Steve said. "You, me, Tony. It'll be fine," he added, sounding like he was trying to reassure himself. 

***

The following day, when they arrived at the address on the business card and the door swung open silently to allow them inside, Sam said, "Wizarding must be nice work, if you can get it."

"Technically it's magery," said the deep voice from the previous day, and they looked up to see a man standing on the landing of a grand staircase. "And I'm tenant, not owner. In the most truthful sense, I suppose I'm a freeloader," he added, starting down. 

"Stephen," Tony said.

"Tony, you're looking well."

"I hope so, given you're biting my style," Tony said, pointing to his goatee. 

"Well, I thought, who's the biggest drama queen I know, and how can I get their look?" Strange said. "Bring the armor?"

Tony held up his other hand, showing off the briefcase. Strange nodded.

"And you must be Captain America and the Falcon," he said. "A pleasure to meet you both. New York owes you a debt, Captain." 

"Just doing our duties," Steve said, accepting a handshake.

"When I say New York, I mean the city itself," Strange said. "But you'll understand in time. Please, this way. I have coffee and pastries waiting in the sun room."

Once they were settled, in a bright room full of light and books, Strange steepled his hands.

"So. You're looking for something, or someone, I think." 

"Information, mostly," Tony said. "And brokerage services, possibly." 

Strange tilted his head. 

"We recently burned out a Hydra base in the midwest," Steve said. "Inside were two...individuals who said they'd..."

"Witnessed," Sam put in. "They said they'd witnessed the Achaphe." 

Strange sat forward. "The Achaphe? What do you know about the Achaphe?"

"Not much," Tony said. "That's why we're here." 

Strange rubbed at his goatee, almost anxiously. 

"We think Hydra has access to it. We need to know whatever there is to know about it," Steve continued. "And we need to find something that can kill it, if it exists."

"I'd say if it did it's in Tony's chest, but..." Strange curled his fingers against his palm, thoughtful. "What little I know of Hydra seems to imply they're all about the marriage of magic and technology, and not to the advantage of magic. I believe they'd enslave it to their own ends if only they could work out how."

"Could they?" Sam asked. 

"No. But they could destroy us all, trying," Strange said. "There are many ways to magic, and the way Hydra comes to it -- the way you came to it," he added to Steve, eyes pointedly fixed on his sharp teeth, "is not the way I came to mine. I know very little about it." 

"So you can't help us," Steve said. 

"I didn't say that. That's why they call it research, not reknow, after all," Strange said. "But I doubt you'll find some secret magic wand or enchanted sword that will help you. Not with this. Still, you never know your luck," he added, rising and turning to the bookshelves behind him, scanning them. 

"Hydra built the Godhammer," Steve said. "Are you familiar?"

"Yes. Familiar enough to know it didn't kill the god it was meant to," Strange replied. He looked over his shoulder, eyes flicking to the blue light in Tony's chest, then up to the blue sparks in his eyes. "There are rules to magic, you know," he said, turning back. "Evil begets evil. Good begets good. But you all have taken evil and twisted it around until it serves a higher purpose. There'll be a reckoning for that, someday."

"Hardly seems fair," Steve said.

"Magic isn't fair," Strange said. "Magic balances, it equalizes -- but it isn't human, it doesn't understand justice or fairness. That part gets left to us. Humanity, yes, but also specifically to us, to the three of you and your friends, to myself, to others we haven't discovered yet. You can't depend on magic to fix the essential injustice of existence, which is why I think there is no long-lost Godhammer to kill the Achaphe in your future."

"What if I could build one?" Tony asked. 

"If anyone could." Strange shrugged. "You have a natural immunity, even when you use it to keep yourself alive. It's actually remarkable, Tony. But first things first. Here we are," he said, taking a book down and opening it, scanning through it quickly. 

"Right here, just like that?" Sam asked.

"Lord, no. This isn't my library," Strange said, waving at the tall shelves. "This is the index. It looks like what we want is on the third floor. Come along. Bring the armor!" he added over his shoulder, as he swept out. 

Tony leaned over to Sam and hummed the Harry Potter theme under his breath as they hurried after. Ahead of them, the walls of the building itself seemed to reach for Steve with yearning.

***

The third floor annex where they found themselves was crammed with books, many of which looked like they might be helpful, few of which were. Strange, who by his own admission didn't know much about the Old Ones, left Sam and Steve to comb through the texts, while Tony more or less paid him for his time by demonstrating the new armor for him. 

"Interesting," he murmured, studying the armor close-up as it hovered at Tony's command, the sigils in the metal glowing blue. "Do you know what these are? I didn't think you were much up on ancient languages."

"Don't have a clue," Tony admitted. 

"How did you know to inscribe them?"

Tony studied the armor. "The Godhammer..." He pressed his lips together, trying to describe it. "It gave me...clarity. I saw what the shit was supposed to look like and I built it. Been doing _that_ my whole life, so it wasn't that unusual. Maybe a little. Usually I at least think I know what I'm doing. Can you read them?"

"Many of them," Strange said. He touched one of the pauldrons, the plates extending down over the pectoral. "These...here, on the arms and shoulders, and the little ones on the fingers, they're all blessings of one form or another."

"Really."

"Very general stuff. _May my aim be true_ , et cetera," Strange said. "These here," he added, pushing the armor upwards gently, so he could examine the greaves and the thick plates over the thighs, "these are curses." 

"Curses?" Tony asked, alarmed. 

"Not on the armor itself. More a sort of...well, for instance, and I'm very loosely translating here, this one implies that if someone means you harm, your wrath will be swift. Which is technically a curse but really anyone who knows you doesn't need the warning," Strange said, grinning. 

"Damn right," Tony replied. 

"I think I found something," Sam called. Tony and Strange both turned to him. Steve bent over his shoulder. " _The Achaphe is an Old One from beyond the Outer Rim_ \-- it gives some references, but I think it's just a translation. _He may not be summoned by men nor does worship interest him, and he must only be witnessed in mirrors._ " 

"Mirrors protect against many things," Strange put in. 

" _He cannot be slain in the mortal dimension as he does not reside fully in the mortal dimension_ ," Steve read. " _Thus his true form is unknown to he who writes this and may it ever remain so._ Well." 

"If he's not far enough into this world to be killed, can he really do much harm?" Tony asked. 

"We've seen what he can do if you don't use a mirror, presumably," Steve pointed out.

"We have?" Strange asked delicately. Steve gave Tony a guilty look. 

"Well, we didn't come here on a whim," Tony said. 

"Says here his influence can reach through the veil between worlds and he delights in devouring," Sam read. "Devouring what, it doesn't say." 

"I doubt he has specific tastes," Strange said. 

" _When witnessed directly, death follows, except for those few who, blessed or of a family of witnesses, gain strength_ ," Sam said.

"Maybe a genetic resistance?" Steve asked. 

" _When witnessed indirectly, the result may be madness, though it is said the Achaphe may employ thralls to do his mortal bidding_ ," Sam continued. 

"Are we saying Hydra is a bunch of Old God zombies?" Tony asked.

Steve shook his head. "Hydra's just people. Dumb, hateful people, but we'd know if it was more. Bucky and me would. We could feel it coming off Schmidt, but his people were always...mortal. Normal. They're trying to use the Achaphe, they must be. It's not using them. At least, not yet." 

"There must be a way to end it. If not kill it, at least neutralize it," Tony said. 

Sam checked one of the pages, then reached for another book, thumbing through the appendices. 

"Generally these stories don't end well for the people trying," he said, half to himself, as he skimmed the text. "Yeah, uh, it says here that he is prophesied to rise and to destroy the Earth and all its inhabitants before he devours the sun."

"Dire," Strange said.

"Yeah, but they all say that," Steve replied. Everyone looked at him. "Well, nobody has an ego like an Old One," he said crankily. "They all think they're going to rule the world for ten thousand years of pain and suffering. I have yet to see one of them even try, the lazy assholes." 

"Maybe don't taunt the Old Ones," Strange said. Steve looked him in the eye and snapped his wings out. Strange clapped the heel of his hand to his forehead, as if he were forcibly closing a third eye. "Point made," he managed, and Steve's wings folded away to nothing. "Regardless, he is still a clear peril. And if there's no literature concerning how to banish or kill him, then my usefulness to you is at an end." 

"Bucky could be banished. There's a dagger that can pin me down with just the blade. There must be something," Steve said. 

"There's nothing here," Sam said. "Just more about the family of witnesses that can survive the Achaphe." 

"We defeated the Chitauri," Tony said. "And in my humble but not inconsiderable experience of shooting at things, if you shoot at anything for long enough, eventually it ends up dead." 

"So we stock up on ammo and hope for the best," Steve said. 

"If you need me, you have my card," Strange replied. 

***

When they got back to the Tower, Clint was waiting for them, with news of the children. The witnesses, Steve thought grimly. 

"Wanda's the more talkative one," he said, showing them a few photographs in which Phillip was a blurred shadow that was hard to look at, but the children seemed normal, except for the occasional, barely-detectable white halo outlining their bodies. "She says Hydra killed their parents and took them away, and they haven't seen sunlight since. When we torched the base, she and Pietro tried to run, but Pietro got clocked by debris. Coulson got her to talk a little bit about what was done to them. She says Hydra did some weird shit -- I'm paraphrasing -- with candles and a sacrifice, and then she and Pietro were shoved into a big metal room. She thinks they weren't the first. They raised a wall in the room and then she says they witnessed the Achaphe, and that's all she'd say." 

"What possible point could they have in doing that?" Steve asked. "Did they know it would make her..."

"Weird?" Tony supplied. 

"I think they've been looking for someone who could survive it for a long time," Clint said. "But that's not the point."

"What is?" Steve asked. Clint offered him a folder. 

"She drew this," he said. "When Coulson asked her if she could describe the Achaphe." 

Steve took a sheet of printer paper out of the folder, setting it on the table in front of him. Sam and Tony leaned around him to study it; Natasha leaned on Sam, and Bruce craned his neck to see. 

The paper was covered with crayon. The background was a hatchwork of grey, and in the foreground was a crude white skull, with furiously scribbled black and red tentacles emerging from the mouth. They were childishly rendered but still compelling -- evil and sinuous, twisting and twining in a way that was uncomfortable to look at. Around all of it were cloudy swirls of sickly green. And in the background, on one slate-grey wall -- 

"Is that a SHIELD logo?" Steve asked sharply. Clint nodded. "How does she know the SHIELD logo? Did she see it on your uniform?"

"It's not on my uniform," Clint said, pointing to the stylized Avengers "A" on his tac vest. "When Coulson asked, she didn't know what it was, she just knew it was on the walls where she was."

"The fuck is Hydra doing that deep in SHIELD?" Tony asked. 

"I think the bigger question is whether it's Hydra or SHIELD that has the Achaphe," Clint said. Steve was staring at it as if he could will it to life with his mind for the sheer pleasure of fighting it. A low hum filled the room, and he licked his teeth thoughtfully. 

"Steve," Sam said quietly, and the hum subsided. Steve looked as if he was startled to be where he was. 

"How can we find out?" he asked. 

"We can't," Clint shrugged helplessly. "Who do we ask? How do we find it? And, not to circle back to this when clearly we have bigger fish to fry, but whoever did this, what the hell were they doing testing it on kids?" 

"They were looking for someone who could survive it. May have been a genetic component," Sam said. "They might've thought they could find someone who could control it." 

"They must be _pissed_ we've got them," Clint remarked. 

"Could the children find it?" Bruce asked. Steve looked at him sharply. "I've seen you and yours," he pointed out. "You always know where Bucky is. You look at a doorway before Coulson walks in the room. They know how to find you, too. If these children were...changed by the Achaphe, maybe they could find it again. We could get the jump on it, somehow. And I would imagine, not to put the cart before the horse, but the Achaphe could lead us to whatever the rest of it is."

"The rest of it?" Steve asked. 

"The elephant in the room you can't see," Tony said. "If Hydra has access to this, in a SHIELD facility, it may be because Hydra has agents in SHIELD. Deep in SHIELD." 

"No," Natasha said, but it wasn't a statement of fact. More like a personal denial. "No, we'd know. Fury would know." 

"Unless he's a part of it," Clint said. 

" _No._ "

"Tash, this traumatized kid drew a giant Hydra skull and a SHIELD logo. It's difficult to picture Nick Fury not knowing Steve's bigger, meaner uncle is in one of his facilities." 

Steve growled, a primal noise. Tendrils of black shot up from his shoulders, across the skin of his neck, twining in his hair. 

"I want the Achaphe found. If we can't kill it, we banish it. I don't care if that means burning SHIELD to the ground with Hydra inside it," he said, voice deepening, resonating in a way no human voice should. "This is _my world_ and the children of Rh'Tat _will not suffer interlopers._ "

Bruce shuddered, and Tony hissed. Sam and Natasha exchanged looks with Clint. 

"Hey, here's a question," Clint said. Steve's gaze was hard to bear, but he didn't flinch. "Where's Bucky?"


	5. Chapter 5

The dreams had been...unsettling him for a while, ever since Tony and the Godhammer, really, Bucky thought. But he'd been able to ignore them before, up until now. The second he saw the SHIELD seal and the Hydra, the Achape, side by side, Bucky knew what they meant. Things clicked into place, the same way they had when Tony attacked him. 

That had changed things, that moment; Tony had found clarity, but Bucky had found sanity, for the most part. Before that moment he had still been a slave to Hydra; after, he was at least free again, if not entirely... _there_. 

He had been haunted by dreams, and one of them -- not even the most important, not even the worst -- was one where he saw the eagle of SHIELD, a great golden eagle, rending its prey. Raptors eating was messy work, and Bucky always tried to look away, but before he could he would see blood spatter up on the eagle's head, and then the skin would peel away, revealing a bleached, bone-white skull underneath. The entrails in the creature's beak would become writhing tentacles or tongues, and he would find himself back in the grasp of Hydra, enslaved again, ravaging at their command. 

And when he saw the drawing, he finally understood. He remembered -- seeing the SHIELD eagle on uniforms of robed figures, knowing that it was Hydra and SHIELD both that tormented him. And he knew that the Achaphe, whatever it was, must lie within SHIELD. 

And he knew where. 

By now they would have noticed his absence, probably, which was why he'd gone underground. Whatever this creature was, it was stronger than they were, and he wouldn't sacrifice his newfound family or Steve to its power. He probably couldn't kill it, but he was willing to bet he could drag it down with him. He had been sent away from this world often enough to know he could get there on his own, and he was certain if he could get close enough, he could bring it along. 

He was Bahatan, the Bastard of Rh'Tat, and this, at least, he was good at -- vanishing, creeping in shadows, waiting to strike. He would miss Steve, but he had never expected a resurrection, and he had done enough evil at Hydra's command to accept this as a penance, if required. 

By the time he reached the Helicarrier, they would be too far behind to stop him, at least he hoped. 

The carrier was docked in Red Hook, ostensibly for repairs, but he'd picked up from Natasha and Clint gossipping that it was there so that it could be used as a PR backdrop for some bigwig who was making a speech today. An address on the future of the American military, to be broadcast live coast-to-coast ahead of a bill on the Senate floor about military funding. Pierce? The name seemed familiar, but that would make sense, wouldn't it, if Hydra had its tentacles deep in SHIELD. Well, he could kill Pierce on the way in if he had to, or on the way out if he was lucky. 

Security around the ship was tight, but Bucky knew the tunnels and access passages of Red Hook as well as he'd once known the streets above; the underground didn't often change. He slipped into the water with barely a splash, and was pulling himself into the carrier through a sewage vent within five minutes. It didn't smell good, but now that he was aware of it, the entire Carrier stank -- an evil, chemical, corrosive smell that almost had a pulse of its own. Something lived here, and he was shocked Steve, who at least had been on the carrier before, hadn't sensed it. Perhaps you had to know it was there to know it was there. 

In any case, especially from the hold he found himself in, it wasn't hard to follow the trail. Down a level, then up two levels, and towards the front, where a locked door, yielding to his picks, opened onto gantries over a vast, open cavern in the bow. 

Silently, he picked his way through the darkness, staring in horror at the light below. There was Pierce, whom he recognized now from memories -- a charming, chafe-skinned man, the likeness of a Kennedy if John F. had survived Bucky's bullet. Cameras and lights, a crew but no onlookers, no press. And filling the space, a construction of metal struts and sheets, covering a heaving body. 

There was the Achaphe, and it was clear now that it was ready to devour, squirming with eagerness. 

There were the cameras, ready to broadcast its visage to the world. Mediated through a lens, Bucky realized, it would drive everyone who saw it mad, and devour that madness until it was swollen, bloated with power, and then -- God knew. 

He withdrew, as silently as he had come. Ten minutes until the speech, and he had to get to it. He was not the most powerful he could be -- it seemed to be tied to the moon -- but if he could terrorize the mortals below into helplessness, he could reach it before it killed him. If. 

He took another step backwards, trying to gather his courage, and backed directly into Clint Barton.

A hand went over his mouth, an arm around his chest, and before he could turn and rip whoever it was limb from limb, Clint's voice said into his ear, "You smell like you crawled through a sewer."

"I did," Bucky hissed, behind the hand, and Clint let him go. 

"Ew," he said. "Also, what the hell, chucklehead?" 

"Are you here alone?" Bucky asked. 

"Am I -- no, I'm not here alone, when we realized you took the fuck off we came looking," Clint hissed. "You know Steve knows where you are, right? It's like a thing with you two."

"Where is he?" 

"Abovedecks. We arrived on a surprise inspection excuse. He's keeping people busy, sent me to find you. You know where it is, don't you?"

Bucky nodded and pointed at the closed door. 

"The Achaphe is _here?_ " Clint went pale. "Buck -- look, we didn't want to say it, but the kids are here too."

" _What?_ "

"Well, where's safer than the Helicarrier, right? Coulson had them in top-security containment, literally just him and me even knew -- Jesus, the kids are _here_ \-- " 

"Worse news," Bucky said. "Pierce is in there too. With it."

Clint gaped. "Alexander Pierce? Our boss's boss's boss?" 

"He's supposed to give a speech. On television," Bucky said desperately. "The Achaphe -- "

"Fuck," Clint swore. "In like five minutes, right?"

"We have to stop him. If you can divert the crew -- "

"You'll what, dive-bomb it?" Clint demanded. 

"I can go back," Bucky said. "I can take it with me."

"Go back to where?"

Bucky gave him a look. "Where they kept me."

"The hell you can," Natasha said, appearing from the shadows. 

"Listen, we aren't getting out of this without a sacrifice," Bucky said. "It might as well be mine."

"Do you know what happened the last time he lost you?" Clint asked. "It's reported in the history books like it's not some kind of epic Biblical shit. The skies turned red for days, grapes withered on the vines -- "

"There's no time!" Bucky said impatiently. "Have you got a better idea?" 

Natasha held up her phone.

"What are you gonna do, call Abdul Alhazred and ask him for advice?" Bucky asked. Natasha pressed the screen.

There was a groaning noise, and the ship shuddered. Beyond the doorway to the bow hold, light began to seep in. 

"I'm bluetooth connected to this entire ship, because I like hacking. The top deck of the Helicarrier retracts," she said calmly. "I'm guessing that's enough of a diversion to start with?" 

A low sound began, the Achaphe wailing in hunger, and the camera crew began to yell to each other, trying to secure lights and cameras that were rocking precariously on their tripods. Bucky peered through at Pierce, who was speaking calmly on his phone. 

"Tony and Sam are in the air," Clint said, handing him a commlink. "Coulson's trying to evac the kids now, but it's not going to be easy."

"None of this will help," Bucky said, even as he pressed it into his ear. "This is an Old One, do you understand what that means? You think Steve and me are hard to kill? We're castoff. We're the weak ones. You can't kill this thing with a bow and arrow." 

"Hey kids, this is Anthony Edward Stark coming to you live from the apocalypse," Tony's voice came over the commlink, sounding calmer than he normally did. "I've got a flying suit of armor, light and heavy artillery, a Nazi-made god-killing machine in my chest, and a radar display that will let me look on the face of evil and retain my sanity. Let's start this hootenanny, shall we? Natasha, I assume the gaping hole in the Helicarrier is where I'm aiming?" 

"Tony, don't -- " Bucky began, but repulsor fire was already falling into the half-open hold. The crew scattered, and Bucky watched in horror as Alexander Pierce lifted a hand and sketched a shape in the air. His finger left glowing orange traces behind, and a repulsor blast bounced off the air in front of him like it had hit a shield. 

"Don't bother with the mortals, Tony, go for the meat," Steve's voice said. "I'm on my way, but this is a lot worse than we thought. Hydra is everywhere. SHIELD is in a civil war up here, it's slow going." 

"Steve, _no_ \-- " Bucky yelled, but Clint and Natasha both grabbed him, and he couldn't get himself free without hurting them. 

"Sam, Steve needs cover," Natasha called.

"Copy, I'm avoiding anti-my-ass fire, should be there soon," Sam said. The roof of the hold was totally open now, and Bucky could see Sam in the air above them, dodging railgun fire. Tony was still circling above them as well, simply ignoring the bullets, firing again and again on Pierce and on the roiling mass behind him. 

"I am most definitely being held up by some Hydra assholes in SHIELD uniforms," Steve put in. 

"So, funny story, you know how people go blind and mad when Hulk comes out to play?" Tony said, circling. "Turns out a genius like Bruce Banner can, indeed, break that wild pony. Bruce, you're up."

"Oh, Jesus," Natasha said. "He's going to level everyone."

"Only the bad guys, we've been practicing," Tony said, and there was a roar from above them, like a thousand screaming goats gently muted by a scarf wrapped around one's ears. 

"Aaaand I'm free, on my way to you now," Steve said shortly. 

There was a sudden shriek from the hold, and the sound of rending metal. Bucky saw Pierce turn, eyes going wide, phone falling from his hand; behind him, the Achaphe was rising up, still tangled in tarps and sheeting, metal bending around it, straining and snapping like brittle branches. From beneath its covering, a thousand wings fluttered and strained, and the shape of its enormous skull was visible through the tarps. In the gaps where it tore free, Bucky saw swirling colors he couldn't name, screaming faces pressed against its skin. Natasha clapped a hand over his eyes, pulling his head away. 

"Oh, shit," Sam said. 

"Don't look," Tony called. "Sam, blind your goggles and activate your heads-up radar." 

"Where the hell is it going?" Steve demanded. 

"I mean....anywhere it wants, really," Tony replied. 

"Steve, come and get me," Bucky said. "I can stop it."

"Like hell you can, Buck, I heard your stupid goddamn idea!" Steve yelled. 

"If it gets free, it's going to murder everyone!" 

Below them, Pierce began to scream, and he didn't stop. 

Steve landed lightly in the corridor from above, his back to the heaving, rising mass. He threw Clint a blindfold. 

"Can you shoot it blind?" he asked. 

"What the fuck," Bucky demanded. 

"If Clint can distract it, Tony can get close enough to deploy the Godhammer," Steve said. 

"That'll kill him!" Bucky blurted. 

"He thinks not. It's a better chance than what you had planned," Steve retorted, as Clint tied the blindfold on. Another second and Clint had climbed onto Steve's shoulders, deftly avoiding the razor-sharp edges of his wings, and they were aloft. Bucky expected explosions, but Clint was faster than that; when he dared to look out of the corner of his eye, he could see arrows pinning the tarps in place, and the monster's body twisting, agonizingly slowly, towards Steve. 

"Give me ten seconds," Tony said in his ear. "Ten seconds and I want everyone to pull way back."

Natasha grabbed Bucky's arm, pulling him down the corridor, and this time he went without objection. He heard Tony counting down in his ear, heard Steve yell that he was taking cover, and then the world went silent. 

***

When Tony deployed the Godhammer, only the second time it had ever truly been used, Steve felt it even through the layers of metal on the Helicarrier that he'd put between himself and the Achaphe. Everything around them lit up bright blue, and the breath felt punched out of him, the way it had the night Bucky had died. For one brief, agonizing moment he was back on the battlefield, watching in helpless horror, but then Sam gripped his arm, drawing him back, grounding him, and Clint was on his other side, breathing hard and panicky. 

Steve peered around the conning tower where he'd secured them, and saw Tony hovering; the Achaphe was still there, writhing, seemingly unaffected by the Godhammer. Even as he watched, the air seemed to ripple, and a limb, barely visible, shot out and knocked Tony from the sky. 

Steve leapt, but the Hulk was already there, ten thousand eyes and the screams of the tormented, wrapping himself around the beast. He looked comically small against the Achaphe, and clearly the monster thought so too; it shrugged, a great, slow-motion heave, and the Hulk reeled away. 

Steve made a split-second decision and dove for Bruce Banner, falling unshielded, leaving Tony to tumble hard on what remained of the Helicarrier's deck. He caught Bruce mid-fall, and barely had time to steady them in the air before he saw figures on the deck below, running. 

Sam was there, easing Bruce from his arms, back to the monster; he gave Steve a look behind his flight goggles. 

"What's left?" Sam asked, over the roaring and screaming that had come rushing back after the Godhammer failed. 

"Get Bruce to the deck. See to Tony if you can. I won't let Bucky drag him back," Steve yelled, and Sam nodded, dropping away with Bruce in his arms. 

Up above, in one of the carrier's towers, Steve could feel the tug of S'Dalap, and the echoes of the Achaphe in the children. He could feel their fear, and his spawn's desperation. They would never escape in time -- and if they did, where was there to run to? The Achaphe would ravage the world. 

Steve turned to look square-on at the mass of shredded metal, the tarps and the arrows where wounds now leaked ichor into the harbor. He spread his wings to their full length, letting go of all the chains and restraints and bindings he had ever put on himself to protect the people around him, the people he loved, from the true violence of his existence. Whiplike black tendrils spread out against the sky, and the star burst over his chest, illuminating every corner and crevice of the monster. 

Steve licked his teeth and went straight for the thickest part of it, sinking the claws of his wings into exposed flesh, slicing it open with his teeth, latching on with every part of him. 

The Achaphe screamed, but its flesh burned, and Steve screamed louder. 

***

On the deck below, Bucky shrieked defiance -- his brother suffered, and he wanted blood, but Bahatan had no wings, and the best he could do was strain upward in the darkness. 

Above, at the highest point of the tower, Wanda-who-was stood quietly at the window, watching, eyes locked on the battle. As one, she and her brother pressed their hands to the glass, and it glowed red. 

On the deck of the Helicarrier, in a cradle of muscle and gold alloy, the Godhammer flickered briefly, and its bearer's heart skipped a beat. Nearby, Clint pulled the blindfold off and Natasha worked over Bruce Banner's still body with Sam, breathing life back into his lungs. 

And thousands of miles away, in a cave of bones and knotted flesh, the eye of the Great Dark Rh'Tat, It Who Sees, flicked open. 

Its gaze darted back and forth warily, unsure what had awakened It, and then It heard the scream of an egg-child. 

It became aware in an instant that there was a rival god abroad in the world; that Its egg-child was locked in a battle it couldn't hope to win. A puny little thing with puny little offspring, but still the spawn of Rh'Tat, and after all...perhaps it was time. 

Rh'Tat stretched Its coiling limbs, and for the first time since the fall of Atlantis, It made Itself manifest to the mortal world. 

***

The battle was over in the time it took to draw three breaths, Sam later thought. 

One, Steve had screamed, the air had split, and suddenly there were two dark forms in the sky -- the Achaphe, yes, but also another creature, rising up from the harbor, all thick stumpy tentacles and one single enormous dark eye, with skin that popped greasily and a gaping thicket of thorns at its heart. 

Two, without even time for terror to enter into the equation, the creature had latched onto the Achaphe, tarps and metal and screaming flesh and all, drawing it in, the thorns of its maw locking onto the flesh. One of the Achaphe's thick tentacles batted at the thing, and Steve was dislodged, falling away, still screaming. 

Three, in the breath Sam drew to leap into the air, everything seemed to heave, and the Achaphe was devoured as the maw thrust upwards, expanding impossibly wide. It simply consumed it, dropping back into the water even as the Achaphe pushed at the thing's flesh from the inside, distending its bubbling skin. 

Sam was already airborne by the time the two creatures hit the water, one inside the other; one of the claws on Steve's wings caught him across the left arm, but he managed to grab him with the right, tucking him against his chest as they tumbled through the air. He saw the harbor rise up like a living thing, water flooding over the Helicarrier's bow and the piers, into the buildings surrounding it, before he managed to steady them. 

"Ancestor," Steve gasped, staring down at the water. 

" _What_ now?" Sam asked. 

"That was my ancestor," Steve said, staring at the waves that were washing over the Helicarrier and the piers. "Great Dark Rh'Tat, Maker of Knots, It Who Sees."

"It who _eats_ ," Clint said in Sam's earpiece. 

"Is that it?" Natasha added. "Is...did he just eat the Achaphe to death in front of us?"

"It," Steve corrected. "And we may now have a bigger problem." 

"You had to say it," Bucky said. "You had to go on and fucking -- " 

He was cut off by Rh'Tat's rise; It thrust Itself out of the water, seemingly endless, and arrowed straight for the carrier. 

For Coulson, Sam realized, and the last vestiges of the Achaphe, the children. 

Steve burst free from Sam's hold, surging upwards faster than normal wings could possibly have taken him, and overtook the leading edge of Rh'Tat's bulbous head, hovering between the great wide single eye and the tower of the Helicarrier -- between It Who Sees and his child, Rh'Tat's grandchild, and the Achaphe's witnesses. 

"No," he said. 

_We told you someday,_ Rh'Tat bellowed, in unspoken words that made Sam's skin crawl, his eyelids twitch. _One of us may kill the other. We will devour all who would challenge us!_

"The children aren't any threat to you," Steve said, wings beating the air, claws unsheathed. "No more than I am."

_We made, and we can unmake!_

_YOU DID NOT MAKE ME!_ Steve screamed back, body arching in defiance, and Sam reached for the dagger much too late. 

He kept it in a sheath under his shirt, normally, designed for concealed carry; he didn't like to leave it lying around. It was empty now, and Steve raised his arm, the adorned handle clenched in his fist, the blade glowing. 

_You think that will stop us?_ Rh'Tat demanded. It surged forward, aiming for the children, and Steve brought the knife down. It was a comically small gesture, a pinprick against a giant, but where it broke the flesh, light burst out, and Rh'Tat shrieked in pain. 

They moved together, a terrible dance, Rh'Tat splitting open as Steve more or less fell towards the harbor, the knife gutting the skin open like a ripe fruit. Halfway down, the great Maker Of Knots burst apart, and Its entrails tumbled into the water, which seemed to boil on contact. 

***

Steve touched lightly down on the remains of the Helicarrier around the same time Sam did. Tony was sitting up in the armor, elbows on his knees, faceplate lifted and face ashen. Bruce was out cold, Natasha and Clint standing over him like they thought someone might attack. Bucky was standing at the edge, staring into the water. When he heard Steve's boots hit the deck, he turned. 

"Everyone all right?" Steve asked, knowing that he sounded like he himself probably wasn't. No one replied. "S'Dalap. Answer me."

"Ancestor," Coulson's voice came over the comms. 

"The children?"

"Safe."

Steve looked around. When he met Bucky's eyes, the other man's hands flexed. 

"If Rh'Tat had killed them," Bucky began. 

"It would have risen," Steve said. 

"If Rh'Tat had taken the world, we would have been princes," he said. Steve nodded. "We would have ruled in blood at Its side." 

"Yes," Steve agreed. 

"Oh, thank God," Bucky said, and dropped to his knees. He started to laugh. Sam, looking relieved, joined in. Tony grinned up at Steve. 

"It ate him," Tony said finally, the blue sparks of the Godhammer in his eyes glowing. "It straight up _ate him._ Like fucking, like Clint eating a Twinkie in one bite. Just. Yawrmp," he said, gnashing his teeth together. "That was your ancestor?"

"Yes," Steve said.

"Can you do that too? Because if so we need to enter you in some hot-dog eating contests."

There was a slightly manic edge to Tony's jokes, but Steve let him have his moment; after all, they were his elect. They would survive this with their sanity as intact as it ever was. 

A door onto the deck opened and Wanda and Pietro burst out of it, heading for Clint, who knelt to wrap them in red-glowing hugs. 

"S'Dalap," Steve said. "You brought the children here?"

"I thought it was safe," his spawn answered calmly. 

"You are grounded," Steve told him. 

Coulson lifted his chin, red eyes sparking. Steve thought for a moment there might be another fight, but then Coulson just said, "You murdered Granddad."

Steve stared at him, then began to laugh himself. "Yeah, I sure did," he said. 

It wasn't over, he knew that; even without the blessings of the Achaphe protecting Hydra, it was clear that Hydra's claws were so far into SHIELD that it might be a mercy simply to kill it and start fresh. But his Elect were safe, his brother and his spawn looked on him with pride, and he, Steve Rogers, had killed a god.

All in all, there were worse things to befall a monster like himself than this.


	6. Mid-Credits Scene

In the depths of the bay, far beneath the shore of Brooklyn, a single thick tentacle twitched. In the darkness, a bubble on the flesh of It burst, revealing an eye no bigger across than a coin; a curious fish, drawn in by the movement, found itself grasped by an unseen tendril and ripped apart by a small, thorny maw. 

The single, sinuous curl turned and slowly began to pull Itself through the water, over the already-rotting flesh of Its former self, past the debris of battle. There was a river nearby; It could feel the currents. It was wounded, even more terribly than It had been before, but It had fed recently, and the water was warm. 

It curled Itself up, finally, in a little crevice at the mouth of the river, under a mighty bridge. When It was again grown, It thought, the ground above would provide rich feeding, and then perhaps there would be sacrifices again -- and much suffering, payback for the violent betrayal of an egg-child who didn't know what was good for it. Millennia would pass first, but they had passed before, and Rh'Tat was none the worse for that. 

It grumbled to Itself for a while, but eventually It slept.

For now.


	7. Post-Credit Scene

Several days after the battle over Red Hook, when the fuss had more or less died away and SHIELD was purging itself of poison, Thaddeus "Thunderbolt" Ross set down a delicate bone-china cup, frail and small in his large hand, and said, begrudgingly, "That's good coffee."

"Although not, I think, why you requested an audience," Stephen Strange said, his own coffee steaming at his elbow.

"No. To the point. That's fine by me," Ross replied. "The US government has serious concerns about what happened in Red Hook three days ago." 

"I think we all have serious concerns about what happened in Red Hook," Strange said. "An agent of the US government almost unleashed an Elder God on the population in an attempt to drive us all mad through our television screens."

Ross looked perturbed. "I meant the numerous supernatural and supernatural-adjacent individuals involved in that battle." 

"Well, as a supernatural-adjacent individual myself, naturally I'm more at ease with these things," Strange replied. Ross realized that Strange's coffee cup was hovering half an inch off the table. 

"The government believes -- " he began, but Strange interrupted. 

"Mr. Ross."

"General Ross," he corrected. 

Strange smiled. "My apologies. Before we go any further, I'd like to make sure I have all the context. When you say _the government_ , do you mean yourself? The military-industrial complex? The president? The people the government represents?"

"To some degree or other, all of the above."

"Goodness," Strange murmured. 

"We believe that the amount of raw, uncontrolled power in New York alone is untenable, long-term," Ross pressed on. He picked up his coffee and slurped down another sip. "We think that controls need to be put in place to ensure people are safe, to ensure these powers are being used responsibly."

"Harnessed," Strange suggested.

"Yes."

"By you?"

Ross gave him a smile. "Well, I wouldn't say no," he said pleasantly. "After all, with our access to intel, we could aim the Avengers very effectively. More effectively than Tony Stark, using them as his private army."

"Tony is an army unto himself. He rarely needs another," Strange said. 

"Then he won't miss it when it's gone."

"Why come to me with all this? No, let me guess, I love guessing," Strange said, when Ross opened his mouth. "You obviously know who I am, and what I do. You're wondering if I could provide you with means to control the Avengers. A kind of magical house-arrest anklet, perhaps. Or some sort of threat -- offer them voluntary self-policing, and threaten them with some big stick I have access to if they disagree. Force them into an arrangement -- unpleasant but not really uncomfortable -- where they agree to work for the good of the people only as specified, in military documents that very carefully define 'good'." 

"Well, you have to admit -- "

"And perhaps, eventually, very carefully define 'people'," Strange pressed on. 

"I'm not in the business of terrorizing the populace," Ross said. 

"Neither are they. I'm sure we'd all like to keep it that way." 

"Well, if you're not willing to help us, we can find someone who will -- and of course then you become subject to these controls as well, what with..." Ross gestured around the room. 

"Mr. Ross -- excuse me, General Ross -- I think we've established that I'm not a stupid man. I think very highly of myself but not, I think, without reason," Strange said. "I am the Guardian of New York -- not just the Sanctum Sanctorum where you currently sit, stewing in your own arrogance, but of all things uncanny in this city, and indeed much of the hemisphere."

Ross opened his mouth to take offense, but no noise came out; he reached up to his throat and found his airway constricting, voicebox paralyzed. 

"It is very good coffee," Strange told him with a smile. Ross sucked air in, the only noise his breath whistling in his throat. "At any rate, it is not my duty to help you control untempered magic, or to submit to your paranoid delusions about Tony Stark's power and your all-consuming envy of the awe and terror Steve Rogers commands." 

Ross fell out of his chair and dropped to his knees, coughing, still desperately sucking in breath, but not enough. 

"It is my duty to protect magic, and to ensure when possible that it is only used for the good of humanity -- a job which, I assure you, I am much better qualified for than you are," Strange continued. Ross felt his airway open and almost screamed in relief, but then his body went limp; he slumped to the carpet, staring dully at the swirling, repeating pattern in front of him, unable to move his eyes. 

"I understand you are not alone in all this," Strange said, standing and crossing so that his shiny black boots filled Ross's vision. "I do. But unfortunately your comrades won't learn without an example, and you're, well, you're here."

Ross felt himself lifted into the air, rotated until he was upside-down, nose-to-nose with Strange, who smiled. 

"It's very exciting, I don't normally get to do this kind of thing. I've put a curse on you," Strange said. "The paralysis is a simple drug, and will wear off eventually -- don't worry, there's a taxi waiting outside to take you home, and by the time you get there you should be fine. The curse won't cause your hair to fall out, or your crops to wither, or even cause you much in the way of ill luck. But you are cursed," he said, his tone never varying from pleasant, polite distance, "to always speak the truth, not just as you see it, but as it really is. In any cabinet meeting, in any strategy session, in any informal get-together that locks out anyone you don't want having a say in things, you will not only speak the truth, but you will be _compelled_ to speak the truth. Which means you will know the truth. And surely, for a man of your integrity and rank, knowing the truth is a precious, precious thing?"

Ross closed his eyes, as much as he could manage. 

"Just imagine what you'll learn about the real motivations behind all this talk of control and concern," Strange said softly. "And bear in mind one more thing -- that if I am willing to do this to you, I am willing to do it to any others who seek to endanger humanity, including the Avengers."

He flicked dust off his sleeve and smiled up at Ross. "So. I'll leave you to it. I'm sure you're a very busy man. I know I am, these days," he added. "The house will show you out." 

He walked away, leaving Ross floating there, and it wasn't until the door had closed behind him that Ross fell to the carpet. Which, of its own accord, lifted him to the very tips of its pile and began conveying him slowly towards the front door.

**Author's Note:**

> Detailed notes:  
> The body horror includes several instances of people having weird, monstrous attributes or injuries forced on them, not always with their consent (ie, Bucky is dying so Steve transforms him into someone like him, and Bucky's a bit iffy about it). Also mentions of bubbling flesh, multiple eyes where eyes should probably not be, and people bleeding from various orifices. 
> 
> There are several allusions to sacrifice in general, and the sacrifice of a lamb for ritual purposes is alluded to directly. 
> 
> Character death is mainly confined to Peggy Carter who, as an old woman aware she is entering advanced dementia, asks Bucky to kill her, and he agrees. The violent deaths of Red Skull and Howard and Maria Stark are also mentioned. 
> 
> The alluded-to child abuse in the story is Hydra's experimentation on Wanda and Pietro, who are much younger in this than in the movies; the experimentation is not explicitly described. 
> 
> The super weird sex is Steve impregnating Peggy in a consensual but somewhat unorthodox fashion that involves neither of them removing their clothes.


End file.
